


Sauron Ascendant Vol III: I am Ozymandias, King of Kings

by VladimirHarkonnen (TheLightdancer)



Series: Sauron Ascendant [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Also lots of crack ships, Bittersweet Ending, Eru handles shit personally, Eru is still a wee bit of a dick, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sauron is a very very very naughty Ainu, This is Arda but 100X the grimdark, Wee random tags, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23604142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/VladimirHarkonnen
Summary: Ascendant over all Arda, Sauron realizes there's just one thing he's forgotten. Namely that conquering a place is always so much more fun than ruling it unchallenged for infinite duration.
Relationships: Arwen Undómiel & Galadriel | Artanis, Arwen Undómiel & Sauron | Mairon, Arwen/Varda, Aulë | Mahal/Yavanna Kementári, Celeborn/Galadriel | Artanis, Cirdan/Nessa, Círdan | Nowë/Other(s), Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári/Galadriel | Artanis, Sauron | Mairon & Yavanna Kementári, Sauron|Mairon/Everyone, Tulkas (Tolkien)/Original Character(s), Vala | Valar/Vala | Valar
Series: Sauron Ascendant [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699012
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Sauron Ascendant Vol III: I am Ozymandias, King of Kings

_LOTHLORIEN, EARLY SECOND AGE:_

The world had changed since…..the strangeness came across Aman. In the past the Valar had demanded that all the Quendi come to them. Then Annatar, who had claimed a friendship, even in his words an ‘intimate’ friendship with the Elder King had distributed the strange Rings. She had taken hers as was expected of her, when the orders to do so were from the very Elder King himself. Something had seemed off about it, which had led her to compound her older rebellion against the Valar with a second. She had never worn her Ring, the way so many others had. Only the lineage of Durin retained similar effects.

There were stories that one of the Valier, Vana, wife of the Monster-Slayer, had come to Khazad-Dum and married Durin IV the Divine Consort, rumors she had come to believe. The Longbeards had always been the strangest of the Naugrim clans but now they were stranger still. Darkness was a subtle thing, she mused, staring into her pool. Outwardly the Sun shone, but its light was colder and artificial, now. Monsters had arisen, new and deadly, and the land of Arda was dyed with blood.

Tar-Mairon, as he had taken to calling himself, was now an infrequent guest in Arda, and his splendor had changed. If it were possible to blend the sickly greenish light of Angband and the unrestrained glory of Valinor together, he had done so. Alone among the Quendi, her people were the last holdouts of the Faithful, sheltering five Maiar that had taken incarnate form and gone to this realm. High King Gil-Galad was faithful too, but he was too fearful of Tar-Mairon to telegraph it. Artanis, last living child of the House of Finarfin feared nothing, particularly when she had quietly sent Celeborn to be with Gil-Galad’s people, removing a hostage Mairon might see fit to wield against her.

Mairon had deciphered the nature of her rebellion surprisingly quickly, after his vast legions had stormed Arda and brought it to heel. The New Amanian colonies were not built in kindness and respect and reverence for the Valar but in the glories of Tar-Mairon. The statements of the colonists that Mairon, the former thrall of Morgoth, was now the husband of Varda? Impossible. And now the Wyrm-Reek.

Smaug was a strange one among the Dragons, the younger brother of a clutch of four. None knew who the father of Anacalagon the Elder and Smaug the Younger and their four sisters were. None knew why their scales gleamed with a glory befitting a scion of Valarin blood, nor their eyes resembling the same skies that the eyes of Manwe did. Bright blue with occasional cloud-whisps in good moods, stormclouds with lighting in bad. Smaug’s vast eyes were stormclouds and in his vast wings the air felt strange, fair and foul in even measure.

From him descended a giant, dark and terrible, a Ring gleaming on his finger. His eyes were the old golden-crimson hue of the First Age, his face a fanged and a terrible one with sharp pointed ears.

**_Galadriel,_** his voice was a tectonic echoing crack, an antisound that murdered the air with the malignancy of its presence.

“Gorthaur.” Her phrasing was cold, as was the defiance in his eyes.

With a terrible mockery, Gorthaur reached out to her, crooning with a twisted serenity and imitation of affection: **_Only you and the children of Khazad-Dum remain outside my will. They have the Runaway, the Valier who has become besotted with Durin and left the Sitsman to remain in his cups. But you? Why are you so special, mm?_**

The Ring glowed now with volcanic heat, leaving a mark against her cheek as she gasped in pain.

**_Yes…..this is a puzzle I must answer. I can bind the Valar to my service and become one in power, if not in a few minor technicalities of the Silent Lord. Existence itself obeys my decrees, your precious Elbereth spreads her legs for me each night that the Elder King does not. I could allow them both time together in my bed, but that would not be worth the doing._ **

His fanged smile was cruel and she felt very small before him as the various veils of modesty that he wielded even now, even now as the unconditional master of Arda itself collapsed. Instead of a tall and armored Maia with eyes of fire and a fanged smile she looked at a thing of the Void, a star collapsed upon itself and weighing everything down around it. The air became thick and tame, the Ring flashing, and she fell before him, swooning into utter unconsciousness, temptingly positioned.

For a time Gorthaur stared at her, his finger tapping his chin between the tendrils of his helm.

**_Take her to Valinor, Smaug Manweson,_ **

The Dragon’s stormcloud eyes met his.

**As you will it, High King.**

The sense of malice made Gorthaur smile and wish to reach for his mace, the dragon snarling and speaking a single phrase in overpoweringly strong thought-speech:

**_Try it._ **

Gorthaur did nothing and the entity snorted and flew off.

He turned to the five Maiar clad in the form of middle-aged men with long beards and staffs.

**_Remain here in this realm and protect it and see what you are worth without her,_** the coldness of his expression a mockery. He formed great wings out of his back, semi-metallic and the claws at the tip of the wings supremely sharp, and flew following Smaug back to his domain.

The leader of the five, Curunir, glared at him.

“We are fortunate that he does not perceive what Galadriel could be to him.”

Olorin’s gaze was sorrowful, as with Nienna who had taught him so much before Mairon had defiled her.

“I know what he has done to the Valier. I shudder to think what he will do to her.” Curunir smirked.

“Do not worry so much, Olorin. She is strong and he, for all that he seems so, is very weak. We shall continue to guide the Faithful, those who can withstand the self-proclaimed High King. And when he falls….”

The other three remained silent. It was the elder of the two in blue, Allatar, who spoke:

“What then, Curunir?”

“The Allfather will judge him, soon enough. The power he has is not infinite, it only seems so. He does not come here seeking a fight because ruling makes him content.”

“A thin reed,” spoke Radagast.

“It is all we have.”

Lips pursed and all of them nodded, accepting the harshness of that truth. Melian stepped from the shadows.

“Come back inside, it is not safe without the walls of this place. My former pupil is stronger than I, right now.”

They nodded. Ever since Thingol had died in the lead-in to the War of Wrath, Melian had been a shadow of her former self. And yet she, alone of the Maiar and the Valar besides them was the only thing of the Good to remain pure in the Age of the Empire of Manwe.

As darkness fell more skittering came to the north of Lothlorien and vast and monstrous spider-like anti-shadows blocked the moonlight and seemed to drink it in. Aside from the faithful, the daughter of the Ram of the Woods Ungoliant alone remained unaffected by Sauron’s claim. It was not an alliance, in truth, but a measure of mutual desperation for all that that in the daylight the Elves and Maiar shielded the Faithful.

In the night the spawn of the creature of the Void went to war against the New Children, and these creatures were still more terrible than their predecessors and cavorted in the literal dead of night. Arda was not a friendly place, even under the iron fist of King Tar-Mairon and a regime that knew neither crime nor banditry, and all of humanity beholden to the children of the Ainur in full flower.

_AMAN, YEAR 500 OF THE HIGH KINGDOM OF TAR-MAIRON, GOD-EMPEROR OF ARDA:_

The Elder King was waiting for them, that was Gorthaur’s first thought as Smaug and he descended from the skies. He had sent Tulkas to try to court a mortal woman of the House of Haleth who was prodigiously skilled at lovemaking to a point that even the likes of Nessa would have been wary. With the enchantments upon him Tulkas would play the role of the fool further, giving Mairon one of his favorite amusements. He had not anticipated now, five hundred mortal years into his reign, how boring victory truly was. All Arda was his, not one corner of it from the remnants of the North to Far Harad and to the vast East of which the Faithful knew little and he much. Great colonizing forces had been dispatched, Vanyar made to work hand in hand with Manwe’s new breed of Orcs, bred by the Elder King in the First Age and more in this one, and the vast and teeming peoples of different regions subdued. Glorious days had those been, even when he insisted on going to his conquests and taking part. In his absence Cirdan had become quite adept at keeping Valinor in line, besotted by the thought that the least among the Valar was faithful to him save when Mairon himself demanded her.

Mairon stood in his realm, and it was indeed _his_ realm by now. The old softer spires and domes of the ancient Valinor and Aman had taken on the harder elements of fortresses and buttresses, Mairon introducing a new kind of fortification. Shaped like a starfish, ringed with new devices he had proven worked in Aule’s forges, these bases were the core of his power abroad and within Aman, his trusted Orcs, some Wargs and trolls, and the returned Balrog whose leaving Khazad-Dum was a condition of Vana for her dwelling there near the Holy Mountain.

That Balrog, whom he knew as Moratar, was not here. He did not need to be. Manwe smiled broadly at Gorthaur and looked expectant. Swallowing the bile and derision he felt at his successes in taming the Valar, Gorthaur yielded and gave Manwe the deep and passionate kiss the Elder King craved. And it was during this that the unconscious Galadriel woke.

\----

Aman did not feel right, she understood that immediately. Here should be healing, peace, the oasis of the closest thing to Eru’s great vision. The air was fouler, much of which was the smell of sex which permeated the place enough it now seemed a permanent addition to the otherwise sweet elements of its…presence. The Mahanxanar was changed, too. One throne was now set indisputably higher above the rest, patterned after the fabled obsidian throne of Melkor, though the obsidian here was interwoven with precious gems harvested from Aman itself and given and hallowed by the Valar as a testament of their new power.

Audible kissing sounds were right next to her, and Galadriel’s vision firmed from a brief glimpse of triple and then double. Sauron, in that same towering form that had brought her into the clutches of Irmo the Dream-King in the outskirts of her own realm was kissing the Elder King, who was reduced to wearing a loin cloth that….she blushed so brightly her face turned a red a ruby or cinnabar gem would have envied. She’d seen all of the Elder King there was to see, and even if he seemed…..underwhelming…for a Valar’s size there was no Quendi in the world with a cock nearly as perfect as that one, even with the Ring-symbol that m-her eyes widened. So it was true.

Breaking the kiss, Sauron’s clawed hand clutched Manwe’s ass very firmly and possessively.

**_My kingdom is doing well, I see._ **

**Yes my lord.**

**_I shall never get tired of hearing that._ **

He pointed to Galadriel with the pointer claw of his other hand.

**_I found that defiant little bitch in her tree-kingdom._ **

Manwe’s gaze at her was something that horrified her. His eyes were not the dull glass-like doll-appearance of so many in the age of the God-Emperor. They were alive, but they were sad, resigned…and dull in a different sense. Sauron had won, he had won for a very long time where Manwe was concerned. Her willpower intensified, and she glared at Mairon, who grinned coldly.

**_I won’t fuck you myself, Elf-slut, that is fatal. Even as God-Emperor, a Maia male cannot lay with a mortal without slaying them. Yet our women can. How…..droll._ **

His grin was monstrous all the same.

**_They call you man-maiden. Do you desire other women?_ **

Her glare became sharper and tinged with fear as her fingers twitched, and Mairon laughed, cold and cruel.

**_I won’t fuck you myself, my dear, but I will ensure that the man-maiden meets maiden-maidens._ **

His gaze turned to Manwe.

**_Tonight, my dear, my wife and this elf for entertainment and then she shall look upon and behold Arda’s King and Queen in their pleasure._ **

Galadriel looked with a strange hope. Manwe and Varda still endured?

**Yes, my lord. Varda will be glad to have you there.**

Mairon pinched Manwe’s cheek roughly.

**_Don’t worry, cutie. After the wife and I have had our fun, she’ll get to see what a good little butt slut you’ve become._ **

Galadriel’s eyes were wide and horrified, and then one of the New Orcs came up. These tall and bulky simian greenish things had a deep stench associated with them different to that of the old Melkor-Orcs, and she never thought she’d prefer one of them to this thing, but she did.

**Thraka, son.**

Manwe’s voice, this time, and she looked with utter horror at the Ork, which turned to him.

_Aye, Father?_

**Take the Elf to my house, ensure that she cannot leave it.**

_Aye, Father._

The Orc slung her over its shoulder and walked off.

Mairon’s gaze returned to Manwe.

**_I have been away for a while from you, haven’t I, beautiful?_ **

Manwe leaned forward into the touch, smiling softly. Mairon smiled as well but his was a much more monstrous and cold grin.

**_Come, dear, we shall take our pleasure. Not here, there is too much prestige for the kingdom._ **

They had arrived against one of Yavanna’s trees. Of all the Valar and the Aratar, Yavanna and Aule suffered the least from his Rings. Enough of the memory of being one of Aule’s servants and of Yavanna’s woods in their true beauty endured in the wake of the last battle of the War of Wrath that all his Rings did was compel them to treat the new age as normal, without anything else happening to them. In that sense was the harshest punishment for Aule, knowing that the greatest of his Maiar was now king and had reduced his brethren and sistren to laughingstocks and weaklings.

His own marriage with Yavanna endured in pleasant comfort, and in the wake of Mairon’s changes, Yavanna’s belly bulged with their unborn child. Ulmo and Manwe had broken the taboo first, though Nessa was not far behind with her own offspring, the Swift in this case yielding to the lady of the Woods. The woods hummed with the contentment and pleasure of their mistress, and even the malignant and horrifying shape of Mairon could not serve too much as a distraction or a lessening of the rest.

**_Spread them._ **

Two words, curt and crude, but they fit both Mairon’s attitude and the nature of his dominion and what he’d amplified Manwe’s own existing desires to seek. That was a thing that from time to time still awed him. What he had brought out in the Valar had always been there, the result of Melkor’s marring and shifting the designs of Eru Illuvatar. In the original design he caught glimpses of sometimes when in his more frantic couplings with Naire, Irmo bound by chains of Mairon’s own devising to watch and then required to clean his wife up, there was an Arda with Valar that included two of their number who had not joined them in the third Music, and all the Valar capable of bearing children.

Or, as Manwe had regularly shown with the desires carefully cultivated and implanted by Melkor, siring them even with the random beasts of the field. The once-singular King of all Arda, embodiment of air and sovereignty always had his body bare beneath the chest, on the will of Mairon. If allowed clothing it was like the transparent loincloth he gleefully flipped up, slipping his monstrous cock inside Mairon’s ass, which met it like the old friends they were.

Manwe’s legs slipped around him and they were soon kissing again, Mairon’s hands gripping bark with his right and Manwe’s neck with his left. Streaks of blue were left from the claws, signs of possession Mairon gleefully wielded openly. Rule might be greater work and strife than he had anticipated, but few pleasures were deeper than that of the tamed and controlled Manwe Lamandar he had made into the perfect Ardan King.

By his will did Manwe decree that the Vanyar were to go forth and colonize and multiply. By his will did Manwe decree that Orcs and other entities of the old Morgoth Bauglir were welcome in Aman. By his will did Manwe decree the erection of God-Temples in the various regions of Arda, temples built by Maiar in honor of Illuvatar where worship was done by the sacrifice of animals and in the darker temples he had privately had Manwe put his full signature to as well, humans offered for the sake of the soul of Melkor beyond the Doors of Night in the decree, and privately in his worship. The idea that Manwe had begun all that and had willingly accepted becoming Sauron’s useful idiot made him thrust into Manwe harder, the chieftain of the Valar groaning in delight, their flesh slapping together very audibly.

Five hundred years of absolute mastery of first Aman, then all Arda itself. He did not declare himself the new King and replacement of Lamandar but he had no particular reason to do so, not then, nor at any other point. He could be more powerful with Manwe giving his decrees holy sanction than in any other way.

After he came inside Manwe’s ass and the Elder King wailed in pleasure he slipped out.

**_I shall have new decrees for your signature and your focus soon. A day or two._ **

**Yes, my lord.**

\----

That evening, Galadriel awoke from the enchanted slumber Mairon had put her in, finding herself in a lavishly designed bedroom that was opulent, fitting more a brothel as designed by Men in the more refined realms of the First Age or Numenor than a couple’s bedroom. The cloths had symbolism of Mairon, and a single pillow in the bed had the symbolism of Manwe, and it dawned on her then where precisely she was.

A touch grasped her chin in two fingers and an immense strength she could not imagine any living being easily possessing. Her gaze was turned by those fingers to look up and out. The entity that held her looked more like a mortal than usual, though her skin retained the deep dark hue that was always hers. Her light came from the starlight that was her gift to mortals and animated the gaze of her eyes, and was reflected in the robes she’d worn before the rise of Tar-Mairon. Since he had brought the Elder King back to Aman, unknown in any deeper extent to Galadriel, the Varda who’d dwelt there had worn less and less until she had become the figure she saw now, clad only in a belt and tiara, unconcerned about her nudity.

Varda, outside Mairon, and his attentions were as often given to the others of the Valier and even among the Valar Orome, Irmo, and Ulmo most frequently, was often highly sexually frustrated as well. This had been so even before Manwe had vanished, it was one of the little frictions of life that they knew was Melkor’s marring. Knowing this did not simplify or ease their married life, nor the realities of the bedroom.

Her breathing was heavy, and in the deep liquid-like darkness of her skin and the brilliant starlight of her eyes Galadriel lost her breath, not even caring about what she would realize when the other hand of Varda clutched her tits, and did not do so gently. Both of them hurt and she whimpered, the sound only seeming to goad Varda on.

Mairon strode into the bedroom then, Manwe accepting him leading hm by a leash of mystical energy glowing from the ring around his erect cock. Smiling at them, Varda smiled very broadly.

**Welcome home, my husband. I see you’ve brought Manwe with you.**

**_I have. I think it would be good for Galadriel to see how Aman works nowadays._ **

**I could not agree more, beloved King of the Darkness.**

And with that her lips were pressed to Galadriel’s own. Varda was cool to her touch, as she always was. Manwe was the feathery element of the air and in the past her coolness had anchored him, given him more of presence and materiality as it was always meant to do, though not quite as it had become. Galadriel shivered, nipples stiffening as more of Varda’s coolness pressed against her.

Valier were taller in normal aspects than mortals to a great degree, at least as tall as the great Mallorns of Middle Earth. And now here, Varda was her size, body pressed against her, that coolness embracing her. Her tits were massive, far moreso than her own even at this size and that coolness made her coo, as her hands against her immediate volition and more by the sheer aura of temptation and desire in the room went down to Varda’s ass, as she hissed:

**Yesssss……**

Behind them, Mairon was seated on the bed, Manwe blowing him with that honed eagerness of his mouth. Mairon smirked as a brief look into Manwe’s mind revealed that after their time together, he had tried to reach out to Varda and gotten slapped and dismissed for it, and then to Nessa, who had quite literally shoved him off the threshold of her house, Cirdan stepping in and cupping her swollen belly possessively.

Such was his life these days, save when Tar-Mairon summoned the Valar together, he had to endure the rejection of his beloved Varda in anything save the most basic superficial interaction, and multiple humiliations from the other Valar and particularly the Valier. A thin reed to hide the mask of power behind but that was the point. The decrees might be in the name of Lamanadar, but it was explicitly the work of Tar-Mairon and all knew it.

He watched as Varda’s lips slipped down along Galadriel’s neck and jawline, and then the Vala repositioned herself, the glowing slit of her cunt right next to Galadriel’s face as her eyes were vast, and the light caught in them. For a moment Mairon regretted that the volcanic heat awakened within him in Angband and never truly stilled meant that he could not lie with Galadriel himself. He smirked, amused. He had fucked Varda earlier that morning, Galadriel would be able to taste some of his cum diluted by the heavily elements of the Star-Queen’s own cunt.

**Don’t……tease….me…** Varda’s voice echoed as her breath chilled along Galadriel’s inner thighs and simultaneously burned with the faintest hint of starlight. With that, Galadriel began to tentatively lick along Varda’s labia, having no idea what she was doing. As Varda spoke to her in the speech of minds, Galadriel meekly complied with the Star-Queen’s orders, becoming more skilled, and working past her lips. Mairon’s eyes narrowed as he saw the addictive taste of the juices taking hold and he smiled. Then….there. As Galadriel’s flushed body jerked and her juices came into a Varda who gleefully drank them all down, Galadriel tasted but a single glob of something that was diluted after a day’s stay in Varda’s beautifully tasty cunt. The heat was memorable and potent, the hottest substance to ever go down her throat. She was grateful that whatever it was diluted as it gave her a horrible burning sensation. Her tongue was to have a permanent black streak after, and she would never explain its origin, nor her pride in bearing it.

After an hour and a half’s lapse, Varda flipped around with a speed and power in that motion that left Galadriel breathless to witness it. Her cheeks gleamed with the starlight from Varda’s juices, giving her face a very literal glow as she turned to Mairon’s erection.

In me now, she growled, nudging Manwe aside roughly with her hands, and then lowering herself onto him and riding him with a ferocious passion that blurred faster than Galadriel could see it. She heard spankings and a low near-keening continuous wail of pleasure from the Star-Queen, something that awed her. Varda was clearly very familiar with Mairon’s body and he with hers. Her behavior was as passionate with him as hers with Celeborn, the emotions this stirred leaving her conflicted. Manwe crawled over to her, as her eyes kept tracking the black blur of Varda’s eager body, and she felt her own legs moved open.

Manwe’s lips were soon deftly appeasing her own hunger watching things, and she looked down at him wide-eyed. None would ever believe this. She, a mere Elf, mighty among mortals but less than the least of the Maiar, had the Elder King himself on his knees eating her out. She cooed and relaxed, the sounds of Varda and Mairon fucking a soundtrack to her legs spread wide, arms sprawled on the chair, eyes closed. Manwe finally brought her off to four shattering orgasms that left her a trembling mess, her breathing deep and jagged, lungs straining for air. Manwe stood up, knowing that the semen of Valar was too much for mortals within. A small smirk crossed his mind and he looked over at Mairon, who gave him an approving nod.

Her trembling hand grasped his cock and brought it against her body, just beneath her tits, and she slowly, with thoughtspeech encouragements from him brought it between her tits, and then worked it with patience, or so she expected. Manwe had been hard when he came in and that had been an hour and a half ago…but in four strokes with both of her tits, Manwe’s cock erupted on her face, five thick strands of his cum filling her mouth as she swallowed it and nearly choked on the feeling of semen that was between semen and a vast air pocket in feeling, but ultimately managing to get it all down.

She huffed.

His cum splattered her face, along both cheeks and her forehead, a thick dollop on her nose, and strands of it matting her hair. She glared at him, and the Elder King was not the least bit abashed. He even did a little fist motion in triumph and then had her pushed forward on her face from the chair, and was able to work himself to an erection by thrusting against her bare flesh and then taking his erection and using her ass the same way.

Absent Mairon’s cruel mercy of the spell that kept him hard, it took him four thrusts hot-dogging Galadriel before another of his deeply pent-up loads sprayed all across her back, Galadriel’s toes curling, and a throaty coo of pleasure echoing from her mouth as she sighed in contentment and rested her face along the carpet, staining it with Manwe’s cum, though the various stains that splattered it with a mixture of off-white and darkness indicated this was far from atypical in this place. Celeborn would be furious, but it would be a fury at the Elder King, the Star Queen, and Mairon. She could feel him and his reaction to her, if very dimly, and to the situation she was in. She clung to the soothing of his presence and his continued love for her as Manwe’s cum remained slick on her back, and Manwe would have Mairon’s balls in his mouth working to get him to finally cum inside Varda Elentari.

Mairon’s grin that night was smug but he considered it earned. The Elf, the most potent and dangerous of his adversaries in this Age of the Ring, had been worked into his system. The last of his opponents that could threaten him was down. Sleep was light on him that night, a curse of a fleshly form, and the long aeons of power and responsibility in the wake of conquest and war’s desolation haunted him. Around him an Elf-chieftain slept, fucked to exhaustion by the potency of Varda and Manwe, and beside him slept his wife, cuddled up to him with a low rumbling of content and brilliant starshine flaring at points and on parts of her body to match her mood, her hair become a dense starfield gleaming with brilliant light.

To the left curled up in the form of a faithful dog on the pillow provided Manwe, the form ordered for him by Mairon each night that he shared their bed, a form that left Manwe more fully reminded who was master and who was servant.

\------

SIX HUNDRED YEARS INTO THE REIGN OF GOD-EMPEROR SAURON OF ARDA:

Another mortal century had lapsed. Khazad-Dum and the circle of those who called themselves the Faithful in Numenor and the eastern lands from what had been Beleriand on south endured. Taken by the cruel wiles of the God-Emperor might the fair Galadriel be, but her husband kept contact with her and he knew that even a century in the epicenter of the Dark King’s power could not change her, nor could any lapse of time.

Mighty might Tar-Mairon the God-Emperor be. By his hands reality had become tilted in the material sense into his will, yet the very existence of Faithful showed his power was limited, and the tears of Nienna, who seldom participated in the debaucheries of Valinor anymore due to how much tears there were to shed indicated too that the Valar were caught in gilded cages but it was akin to catching a ball of fire in a cage of wood.

Arda did not slumber, quite, but it was given the False Peace. Sauron began to order his monsters more firmly to restrain their innate destructive natures, and an entire war-horde of the New Orcs launched a revolt against him in the name of the Lamanadar, true King of Arda. So came war briefly to the Misty Mountains of the north, and it was brutal and terrible. The God-Emperor did not directly take the field for its first years, but he did in the last week of the war when he arrived on the back of Smaug and Manwe Lamandar on Smaug’s sister, and Manwe, clad in a thin loincloth and his beauty exposed with the ugly scarring marking him around as a being exposed to the lust of Sauron’s Great Beasts serving as more of a beautiful kept maiden, of a sort, while Annatar broke the gate of the Orc-fastness and slaughtered in merciless and destructive fashion all that remained of the Orc-horde.

That evening he took with him Manwe, both moving to the back of Smaug, Manwe unconcerned at the Orc-blood splattered along his body by the incautious and rough gestures of Mairon. Mairon had ordered Tulkas on another quest, this time to seduce the eldest daughter of Manwe still living, and not bothering to inform him that this particular daughter was a troll-woman who was more humanoid than most, but contemptuous of Tulkas and after his two thrusts, sending him back with a crude note from her woven into the vest she had made for him as his ‘reward.’

Tulkas squatted near Manwe’s doorstep, wearing a pair of scanty shorts that Mairon had ordered him to wear, his bulge visible, and the contemptuous writing on the vest leading Mairon to laugh and pet him on the head. Nessa was expecting her second pregnancy by Cirdan, expected to be more than one child by now. Their first child had become a mariner to rival bright Earendil, taking elements of Aule’s forges and of Cirdan’s native skills and her mother’s swiftness to build a ship that had a growling engine, and was empowered by runes of both Aule and Yavanna. She had become the first to circumnavigate the globe, and while she loved her mother and father…...

It was her who saw Tulkas first as he lumbered back, that same empty expression on his head. Her eyes narrowed and the glare was intense enough that Tulkas froze, cowering a little. She laughed coldly and kept her hand on her mother’s belly, an intense conversation about how soon her siblings would be able to ride animating them both. Cirdan stood, his clean-shaven head and bright clear gaze meeting Tulkas.

“Greetings” was all he said, a single word, and then he went by his wife, his hands on her neck. Tulkas’s ring glowed with a bright intensity and he lowered his head and went to the room with the chair that had become his favorite place to sleep and nodded off. Nessa was so good to him to allow him to remain in their old house in this chair, the last thing of his left. Cirdan was now the master of the house, and it was only Nessa’s kindness that kept him from removing the Vala from what had been his own domain, once.

The next morning Cirdan and Tulcwen, their eldest, stood at his chair, Tulcwen’s gaze much more contemptuous than that of Cirdan, which was pitying.

“We had room for you with Tulcwen. We will not when the next children are born. I am sorry, Tulkas Rucinaldo, you cannot remain in this house. Find another.”

Sighing, Tulkas stood up and left without a word.

As much as she was a product of Mairon’s New Aman, Tulcwen’s gaze was….quiet….as she saw him leave. The compassion in her gaze, for the first time, led to a brief awareness of just how powerful the mystical elements in the house actually were, and she perceived it lit in dreadful Morgul-lighting instead of the light of the Sun or the moon caught by light-gems.

In that truer gaze she turned to Nessa and her own father and saw all the same that the evils worked by Annatar had not created something that could not exist, or have come to exist, on its own. In that moment of insight, she smiled in a somewhat sharply relieved fashion. Mighty might the will of Mairon be but he was still bound by the limits of his greater, and now-departed master.

When Nessa happily kissed her husband, she smiled at a different level and went to her room to work out where she intended to go next, poring over maps. The Morgul-light faded and resumed a normal-seeming hue.

Mairon had stepped out of his own mansion that day and spotted Tulkas slouching around with his belongings in a sack tied to a pole on his shoulder and took a birdlike form before transforming back into his fuller self.

**_What happened?_ **

**Nessa and Cirdan are soon to have the next children. There is room for them to have a larger family, and there is room for me. So…..I no longer live with my former wife.**

Mairon’s hand on his shoulder was a seeming picture of compassion to those who watched the most superficial body language and that alone. So too was his smile a cold and terrible one, in truth, but under the glamours he cultivated one of sorrow and sympathy.

**I am sorry, old friend.**

**I knew it was coming. Tulcwen shows me how little the new generation respects those who were once the Mahanxanar.**

**I know.**

Mairon sighed.

**_Rule is a weighty burden, friend. The Allfather entrusted it to the Valar, but under the Restored King the Valar collectively, well….._ **

He sighed, the glamour making it seem sorrow leavened by understanding and not derisive mockery and scorn for a fool who’d over-proven himself thus.

Tulkas nodded.

The old war-fires were dim nowadays and it was hard to remember when he had laid low Melkor the Morgoth and had been the one to hurl him into the void.

**You have truly been a good friend to me, Mairon. And understanding. When Nessa took up with Cirdan after her time with you….**

He sighed.

Mairon nodded.

**_You were the first to see your relationship crumble, it is not an easy thing, friend._ **

**No, it really isn’t.**

He smirked.

**_My Elf-maid, Galadriel, has been a bit of an uppity cunt lately, I could use your help in suppressing her._ **

**Even with my-**

**_Yes, even with it. It’ll get your mind off of Nessa choosing a superior partner for a time, and give you the chance to flex that wondrous strength of yours._ **

With that, Tulkas and Mairon turned to the Palace he had slowly reconstructed at multiple levels from the original home of Manwe and Varda. The Elder King himself was off to Arda to slake his lusts on more of his partners that Mairon and Melkor had conditioned him over time to prefer, away from Varda. The Star-Queen was out actively holding audience. For all his contempt to both of them, Mairon respected her regal figure and made a game out of having her hold audience in the nude to ensure that people would take her nudity as a given and forget the days where she had once worn robes.

Galadriel was regularly fucked into exhaustion by Manwe and Varda, but to his consternation her willpower could not be broken by sexual pleasure, even from the former King and the still-regnant Queen. Varda had in particular broken her, at a purely physical level, with her becoming addicted to the taste of the Star-Queen’s cunt juices. But enjoying sex with the Queen of all Arda was not the same as leaving her a sufficiently pliable subject for Sauron to rework on a whim, and that gap remained something to vex him.

Thus……Tulkas getting what passed for kindness from the very sorcerer who had destroyed his marriage in the first place.

That afternoon, Manwe held audience clad in the revealing garments that Sauron had accustomed him to wear and blessed returns from the Overseas colonies. Even with his robes, as modified as they were, and with the undertone of derision from those who saw him in audience, it meant nothing to him, due to familiarity with this. It also meant nothing to him because these audiences were mere theater as per Tar-Mairon’s orders. The real affairs of state and of Arda were contracted in the mansion Mairon now claimed for his own with his wife, Manwe moved to a newly installed upper floor and accustomed to sleeping in Spartan conditions.

The audiences concluded, Manwe stepped down from the Mahanaxanar to return home, seeing Tulkas walking there with his steps having a solid spring in them. Manwe was more than content with the new situation under the High King. Melkor had done horrible things to him and only Tar-Mairon fully understood. He did not judge him or begrudge him his habits, so lovingly conditioned into him by the Lost One, and because of him both Melkor’s old sphere and Yavanna’s were widened.

As if thinking of her was enough to summon her, he saw her and Aule walking to their work, their infant son sleeping soundly strapped to her back. The smile on his face was broad. Out of all of them under Tar-Mairon, only Aule and Yavanna had had a truly Ainur offspring, Nessa had had three children, all of them by her new husband Cirdan the shipwright, and Vaire the weaver had a son by Ingwe of the Vanyar. And of course there were the immortal offspring of Vana and her husband Durin IV, though to Manwe they hardly counted.

Ulmo was so seldom involved with the sons he’d sired on Uinen that Manwe thought as little of them as Ulmo did. The very ease with which the three were forgotten and the severance of Ulmo from his sphere had brought Uinen and Osse greater awareness that Tar-Mairon, the name whispered in reverence by the wind, had become something very distinctive and dangerous and powerful in the annals of Aman.

Manwe shrugged, dismissing this as a non-concern, and strode home. Within his house he saw the mighty and defiant and willful Artanis, the unhappy maid that Tar-Mairon had hired to be his wife’s pleasure toy and from time to time to give of her flesh to Manwe when Tar-Mairon decided to reward his loyal servant with blessings from another not himself stripped and held against a wall by the vast bulk of Tulkas.

For a moment a memory flashed in him, even beneath the power of the Rings.

_The Battle of the Powers, where had descended from the Halls the last of the Valar, even after his now-sundered former wife. Clad in breeches and boots and with vast fists and laughing in a booming and terrible sound Tulkas had faced the towering ice and fire-clad form of Melkor, weakened by then by the first stirrings of incarnation and its traps. Melkor had surged against him but he was the straw that broke the camel’s back, slamming Melkor on his back and his fists surged with great glee._

The memory left him ambiguous, it was easy to hate Melkor, but in the prison of Angband he had been changed, parts of him that were, perhaps, the result of Arda Marred let loose rather than sublimated into cold words. Cold words and bitterness and the sourness of what should have united him and Varda most. It was easier to blame it on Tar-Mairon and his Rings, but as with his first Master of the Ruinous Powers before them, neither could create, only mar or perhaps bring out what was already there.

Galadriel was nude, eyes flashing, and she was screaming “Get off me” even as Tulkas moved his elbow to her throat and her screams became hoarse rattles. Tulkas smiled, his own body as thinly clad as Manwe’s own, and he worked out his massive cock. Tulkas knew not all of it could or would fit in the Elf, but it meant nothing to him that it did not. All he had to do…..the head slipped into Galadriel’s twat and even hoarse the pain in her screech was audible.

Tulkas thrust but once and his cum flooded her and Galadriel burst into tears, as Tulkas withdrew, wiping himself on her side, as more tears flooded her eyes.

**Thank you, Artanis. You honor me in the first night of my new life.**

Artanis wiped her tears and her rage was tangible, enough that Tulkas, once the one who had laid low a titan who had fought all the Ainur together when he was weak enough to do so, and then in every clash the two had fought in the material plane with progressively greater ease took a step back.

_Damn Gorthaur, he means I can’t not want this and just fade to Mandos._

Her wet eyes and the tears down her cheeks mitigated the fierceness she wanted to feel, as did the cum that coated her legs and her left flank. With what dignity she could muster she stalked off like an affronted cat. Both Tulkas and Manwe snorted coldly. Elf-women.

Beyond all this, in the last year, the six hundredth of the era of ‘Tar-Mairon’, the last of the Eagles had left the Holy Mountain and gone to Arda, which while still under Mairon’s power had the Five Heroes, as the rebel Maiar were known. Curiously, in spite of commanding all of the Valar, Tar-Mairon made no serious efforts to challenge them, nor to seek out and murder the Faithful, save in the secret sacrifices of the most foolish and fanatic in the Dark Temples on the moonless Nights.

Still more curiously, after centuries of silence from the draining of the trees and the slumber of the heirs of the Two Trees from the return of Manwe and Tar-Mairon, both of the heirs began to produce leaves and fruit again, and all Aman held its breath, as for a moment the might of the Lord of the Rings wavered. He personally went to where they grew and he looked upon them with a forlorn and wistful gaze, sighing in the memory of lost beauty and of his memory in that distant era when Mairon had suborned him to his will so brutally….and he departed.

When agents of Radagast the Brown infiltrated Aman to retrieve one of the precious fruits, seeds of the Tree sprouting in Numenor and in three more locations in Arda, Aman again held its breath…..and the Lord of the Rings again did nothing. His enemies were gone, and there was no effective resistance to him. What difference did trees make?

His couplings with Manwe were especially vigorous and brutal afterward, leaving Manwe with visible bruises on his bodies and difficulty in sitting down but past this, there were no concessions to his anger beyond the renewed confirmation that the nominal King of all Arda was the conquered.

Then, without warning, a few months later in that same year, Tar-Mairon summoned the Mahanaxanar and wielded his Palantiri to send the message to all Aman and to the colonies.

**_From this day forth, I shall no longer take the title of High King Tar-Mairon, Co-King of all Arda. I am the God-Emperor of Arda, Master of the World and of its vastness, and Manwe Lamanadar, Elder King in name, retains that title, and the truthful relationship is made known as it has been in the centuries since the Elder King was restored from the torments of Angband._ **

The eyes of Mairon briefly burned with an intensity to rival the stare of the Lost One as he continued:

**_Circles of those calling themselves the Faithful set themselves against my divine monarchy, and rebel against the true king of all Arda. I caution the rebels to be wary of what they set themselves up against and how it is set, and that their actions are futile if they suspect themselves of strength to hold against me. To plant the relics of dead trees destroyed by my master of old is no defiance. To raise armies, or to seek to actively defy against me shall see places ravaged and all that is burned to the ground._ **

His gaze turned to Manwe Lamanadar, who gave a single regal nod, the effect more than somewhat detracted from by the short skirt that he was wearing, and the effects of the visible footprints and Orc clan-sigils added to his legs as well as his arms, and that his body had nothing on beneath the skirt.

Mairon smiled, and then his black armor he had accustomed himself to wear shone with a reddish light as part of the internal fires within hm was unleashed.

**_Woe betide any who disregard the warnings of he who is master of all Arda. I shall pursue them past the doors of night and the halls of my vassal Mandos shall be no obstacle to me, either._ **

The message was stilled and the Palantirs went dark.

That night Manwe found himself bound by modified Elven rope with his body positioned in a kneeling position but his legs forcibly spread. As Galadriel was similarly held down and a specialized device of Aule’s make that had begun to spread in popularity among flesh-clad Ainur and in Aman, and soon the colonies, thrust into her with a false-penis more tears fell from her eyes. Curse the Mor-gul at work in Aman, between that and the general eroticized air of Mairon’s bringing out what was meant to be the purest expression of trust and love and turning it into something very different, her body was always responsive, and in the eyes of Mandos, that alone sufficed to keep her away.

Such had been how Aredhel had cheated death too, back in the day.

Galadriel’s tears and Varda’s aggressive further conquest was contrasted with the delirious murmurs of pleasure from Manwe, and the equally aggressive sounds and feelings extended by Mairon’s sorcery from both. Manwe was wielded effortlessly, conquered. Made into a pleasure-toy whose body had become molded to Gorthaur. Gorthaur’s brutally oversized cock in Manwe’s body was his greatest preference, then the lovers he had been conditioned to seek, then the furtive and shameful attempts with other Ainur and sometimes, when truly desperate, mortal women who almost always dismissively turned him down.

One Elf with a particularly malicious turn of mind had seemingly taken him up on his wish only to leave a bitch in the bed clad in her clothing. Manwe had stared at it, sunk his head in shame, and walked away, the Elf-woman’s cackles following him. With the careful encouragement of God-Emperor Tar-Mairon she spread the rumor that Manwe had literally slept with the animal in a lovely night of passion.

No bitch now, at least no four-legged furry one. Only Manwe Sulimo, tied and bound in a mirror of his treatment in Angband, getting as rough a pleasure from Tar-Mairon as he had from Gorthaur from time to time whenever Gorthaur had returned triumphant from Melkor’s great schemes unleashed against his foes. His toes curled and the continual keening pleasure mirrored in tone at times Galadriel’s wailing, the dissonant and morbid song of Tar-Mairon’s great empire in rawest form.

_SEVEN HUNDREDTH YEAR OF TAR-MAIRON, GOD-EMPEROR OF ALL ARDA:_

Tar-Mairon, God-Emperor of all he surveyed, found himself facing an unanticipated problem. All his foes were sufficiently broken. Only the Faithful, a small group that had grown from one in a hundred thousand to one in a thousand, now, remained and they knew too well his merciless cruelty to flaunt it by more than quiet ceremonies around the scions of the trees. In truth, for the bored God-Emperor at the apex of his power, there was but one target he could seek to properly hone his bloodlust.

Careful reading and delving into the mystical side of the Void had shown him a sign, an Elder Sign, capable of banishing or weakening the ability of a monster from Beyond the Stars to take great physical shape. A secret at last to banish Ungoliant, the Mother of Monsters as Manwe had become their father. A brief thought had occurred to him of trying to arrange a mating of Manwe and the Lady of Spiders but it passed. Ungoliant’s unholy brood were horrifying enough without the extra infusion of the power of Ainur that would make them unstoppable.

Tar-Mairon and Manwe Sulimo thus set out, Orome, who had long since reconciled himself to his status as one with a broken marriage and in his cups and feasts looked up drunkenly from softening and bloating physical traits to wish them well, as Mairon and Manwe both rolled their eyes. With them departed, Nessa, now visibly pregnant with her latest pregnancy by the virile Cirdan, and Cirdan took the place of Tar-Mairon, Varda left to slake her lusts on the still-stubbornly resistant Galadriel.

They flew to Nan Dungortheb’s outer edges on the back of Smaug’s son, Anacalagon the Golden, the largest of the flying dragons since the first to bear that name. Anacalagon set down a good fifty feet from the shadowy edge, carefully hoarding his flame, for the monster that lurked within was enough to easily more than challenge even the mightiest of all living dragons.

Gorthaur knew no fear, stepping forward with his shield empowered by the Elder Sign and activating his mace with the power of a bound Mor-gul crystal that gleamed with terrible light. Manwe was bound by a rope from the claw of Anacalagon’s wing, stuck to watch his beloved King face the monster.

Skittering followed and then It stepped out of its shadows. Now older, and enfeebled somewhat by older age and the inability of its carefully constructed mortal shell to hold onto the fraction of power in its incarnation, Ungoliant was an awe-insipring and hideous thing. Vaguely in the shape of a spider, with eight legs, and nine eyes, she had a vast fanged mouth, and was a titan sufficient that even Gorthaur understood why his former lord had failed to slay her in her prime.

Her prime was long passed and while her brood were plentiful, the ability to breed them had taxed her form.

**You come to me at last, God-Emperor. Come to die?**

Her voice was horrid, a thing that looked like that should not have been able to communicate so neatly simultaneously in Dragon-speech, Black Speech, and perfect Valarin but she was. At points she raised her head and it seemed more a goat than a spider, and her body would spasm in those cases and it seemed like there were two entities, if not many more, woven into her great shape.

**King of Arda. Pfah. There is more to existence than your realm alone.**

**_The quest to seek that destroyed my master, creature. I will not make that same mistake._ **

**That one, no. You came to me, Gorthaur. You made a wholly different one.**

A Word of Power and the Elder Sign blazed and the weakened Ungoliant shrieked in agony, a wailing of the damned that rattled the Nun Dungortheb chilling the souls of all who heard it. The Mor-gul gem began to form the symbol again in light, speaking more Words of Power to emblazon it as streaks of light, as the creature wailed.

Its hold in this dimension, that which tethered it, was fraying. That damned sign.

It was a spawn of the Outside, it should-

The eyes of Ungoliant froze and it looked at Sauron with a new respect. Of course.

Here in Arda, there was only one master, the Lord of the Rings, and his Rings were drawing on the full and undiminished power of the old Aman, allowed to blaze in unrefined power for the purpose of banishing her mortal incarnation, when this reality had crossed a line that would mean her limitations on returning would be for countless centuries.

Anger and fear blazed in Ungoliant and she skitter-lurched forward, a monstrous bellow echoing in unconstrained wrath for Tar-Mairon, whose symbol blazed and caused the tether at last to shatter beyond repair, the straw beyond which her considerable power could bear. Ungoliant wailed in a death-scream that caused her to pulse and lurch, the vast spider-like form replaced by something Else.

The shadow of that Thing that had broken his master glimpsed in the open light of day. A great head like that of a Ewe and a Ram in the same sense, eyes within eyes within eyes, mouths within mouths within mouths. Angles that did not move as angles ought. Reality shattered around her, giving a crystalline appearance akin to the eye of an insect, and Mairon, Anacalagon, and Manwe were hurled forward by the gravitational distortion.

A low sonorous siren-like bellow echoed.

Reality reasserted itself, and Ungoliant fell on its back, and from there, the tether would devour itself.

In exhaustion, Tar-Mairon fell forward, and Manwe stared in shock, horror, and awe.

What he had seen was a glimpse of what had broken him once and now the fuller glimpse of a dim shadow of what had driven his brother stark raving mad and intend on annihilation existence was burned into his brain and his will. Anacalagon the Younger was so horrified a snorted fireball broke Manwe’s chains and the Elder King formed his wings to float down gracefully, extending his hand to Mairon.

Before them lay the slowly imploding and decaying not-corpse of a thing only partially obedient in the outward sense to the laws that they knew. Tar-Mairon had fought something grant, and he had saved them all, perhaps.

That evening, Tar-Mairon and Manwe remained in the reconstructed city built akin to old Doriath, but on the coastline. Teleri, kindred to Cirdan the Viceroy of Arda, husband to Nessa, Vala-Quendi. The city’s splendor was that of the undimmed old Aman, and in it the monstrous form of Gorthaur should not have fit, but empowered by the burst of energy that let him best and remove the decaying shell of Ungoliant from that which permitted it to continue to exist, fit he did, and quite strongly, too.

It took him centuries in mortal time, though only fifty Valarin years to recover, and on the wings of the quiet Anacalagon the Younger did Manwe and his Lord return to his kingdom.

The passing of Ungoliant was a thing felt across Arda, and Aman was enjoying a festivity of a sort that had not been seen since the ascent of God-Emperor Tar-Mairon. It was not that he actively banished celebrations, it was that he did nothing to preside over them. Cirdan, his older children, and Nessa, with her body very visibly pregnant and soon to have the latest children, were leading the festivities as Manwe and Tar-Mairon followed the very path that the old Melkor had wielded to claim the Trees as his own.

They were not unknown and unobserved, and it was Tulkas, who had built for himself a cyclopean home near the outer edges of the residences of the Valar at the lowest edges of the Holy Mountain, Tulkas the Fool on the outer edges of the festivities as he was among the Valar, who heralded them with joy. The exhaustion of the Lord of the Rings, even with his Rings, was sufficient that enough of the Valar suppressed by the overburden of the enchantments and the Rings was able for a moment in time to gleam undiminished, even slightly enhanced, by the power of the Rings on their fingers.

Tulkas, not the Fool but the Valiant and the Firm was it who greeted them, golden beard back in leonine shape.

Tar-Mairon had frozen when he realized not only was the Valiant restored, but the Elder King for a moment had bypassed the still greater chains on him to have a glimpse of that which had been overawed. Tulkas striding toward him, eyes blazing, but his hands were not fists. Not fists. A phrase that Tar-Mairon clung to again and again and then he was stunned again when hefted up by Tulkas in celebration.

**Hail Tar-Mairon, King of Aman, vanquisher and banisher of the Unholy One!**

Gorthaur’s eyes blinked like a pulsar at the sight, and the reality that a briefly undimmed older Tulkas was holding him without intent to rend him limb from limb.

Then he heard him in Thought-Speech:

**I could kill you right now, Melkor-whelp, and there is nothing you would do to stop me. What does that is you have not only declared yourself king, but in slaying the monster, acted, even for a moment, like the Elder King ought.**

Nessa the swift, even carrying another set of multiples by the great Cirdan Valaquendi, was there beside him in an electric blur.

**And she is more than happy to have become Cirdan’s wife.**

Nessa’s gaze in turn bored into him as Tulkas placed him down.

_I know what you’ve done to me, Tar-Mairon, God-Emperor, so-called. You ended my marriage to the one who caught me, after all the strife and struggles since our first wedding marred by your master._

Her hand was on her belly.

_I should hate you for this, my King, but in truth, I do not. In this, if nothing else, you have done good aiming to do evil, and freed us both of an unhappiness that would have rendered us eternally shamed._

Then she grasped him by the lapel.

_Even when we fall back after your strength recuperates, bring my former husband back. Cirdan would make the demand for himself but it is unseemly._

**_As you will it, Lady Nessa._ **

With that she turned her nose up.

Mairon’s exhaustion lasted for four Valarin months. As he sunk into a near-catatonic stupor on his Throne, Tulkas returned.

The God-Emperor was a near corpse upon a great obsidian throne, his body healing the monstrous power that had channeled through it, the damage done to him. His will could be communicated with thoughtspeech, and in that sense he made it clear that it was a time for Cirdan to rule until he awoke, and Cirdan’s deeds would be as Manwe’s. All understood the truer statement behind it, and Cirdan wore the crown that Mairon had made for him for the times of his rule and sat on his own throne with Nessa beside him as each sought during the God-Emperor’s recovery and the recognition of their growing freedom to reclaim just some of what was lost and suppressed.

The Thaw, it was called, the moment of hope before the final and the great end. The Thaw. In its opening week, Aule and Yavanna, and Nessa also, of the Valar removed their Rings. They sought at first to discard them or seal them away but such was the power of the Rings when the God-Emperor remained on his throne with the One fully intact that they could but place them around their neck. Gorthaur would not begrudge them this, he deemed it a worthy experiment in how much of his deeds had been himself, and how much the Valar.

Ulmo and Varda, whose Rings were not removed, did not seek to join Nessa and Cirdan in healing wounds. Rather Ulmo took Varda in the bed of the God-Emperor, and the God-Emperor felt a genuine amusement at this. Truly had Ulmo’s willfulness become magnified, and his insubordination. It was a pity for him that his true claim rested on the useless Manwe, whose name was now the veil behind which Cirdan the Valaquendi and Nessa the Lightning-Queen acted.

Never had the changes in Manwe become more bluntly illustrated when the former Elder King had a realm that was potentially restored to his rule and all his former colleagues and subjects simply bypassed his existence to bow before Cirdan and Nessa. Even in the restoration of his brilliance undimmed, Manwe’s scars remained, as did his passiveness. Millennia away from rule and from being required to exercise it left his instincts atrophied, and after some ignored protestations from him, Cirdan and the pregnant Nessa made him resume his seat by the catatonic God-Emperor, and then with an impish smile, Nessa made him the God-Emperor’s caretaker, the better to repay his old friend for the favors given him.

Varda too had ignored him when he sought to re-establish their relationships, dismissing his rhetoric in favor of time with Galadriel and finally and bluntly grabbing his cock in a vice-grip that made him make a pained squeak, nodding to accept the realities, and stalking off with his cock aching in a wholly different fashion to how the God-Emperor made it. Thus he spent his time with the catatonic God-Emperor and became used to the nightly skin-changing at his feet, even as Cirdan and Nessa sought to bring elements of the old Valinor back.

No more than he did under Gorthaur did he read the decrees they signed, though Valinor breathed far more easily, and so did all Arda. A few of the wounds that Gorthaur had inflicted healed, though only a few, and Cirdan, Nessa, Aule, and Yavanna reclaimed the esteem that the Ainur were to be held. Tulkas, though restored to his original home, was dismissed by his wife as anything save a person who deserved to live there, in spite of all of his attempts to reach out to her.

Orome lost some of the growing bloat that reflected his sloth, and went to Khazad-Dum to seek of his wife. Vana had answered him there with her belly showing that she and Durin IV were awaiting more of the Vana-sons, and he simply took that with a nod and left.

It was in that mood, in the third month of God-Emperor Tar-Mairon being confined to his throne to recuperate his strength, that a flabbier and weaker Orome stood before Galadriel, who had had a blessed few months away from a Varda who, bereft of other influences, gleefully coupled with Ulmo and had taken Ulmo as her latest lover in her own bed. Months of the greatest peace in Tar-Mairon’s realm that she had known, her stability returned as much as it would.

And now, in the King’s own house, stood the towering and softer fattened form of Orome, his eyes no less terrifying in bloat than in thinness and whipcord-strength lesser only to Tulkas. The effect on him was a gross distortion something divine fallen into sloth and sin, and his wine-stained teeth only emphasized that.

**Even in the King’s weakness, my wife chose Durin IV over me.**

She gulped.

**You, harlot, have been with the Queen, the King, Mairon, Tulkas, Vaire, Irmo, and a comfort woman to Tar-Mairon’s Orc-captains.**

He smirked, striding toward her with the rolls of his body jiggling with the motions.

**I will take some of that for my pleasure. It has been……centuries, in Valarin time, since I have been welcomed with any.**

Galadriel found herself up against a wall again, terrified.

“Please, please don’t.”

**Why not?**

“You must be closer to yourself, Lord.”

**I am. I am a hunter, am I not? Here I am before you, empowered, made strong and glorious. I am the hunter, little Artanis.**

His hands now were on either side of her as she was hyperventilating, exposed in her nudity again.

**I am the hunter, and you are my quarry.**

With that he shrunk himself in proportions to a height matching that of her Celeborn and her lower jaw quivered at the aching flash of him, and at another pulse from him that reminded her that he loved her, that no matter what Tar-Mairon’s kingdom of foulness did to her, they were one and they would always be.

**You, alas, have a form of Elven dimensions, so my true size would kill you. This one, though…..**

He licked along her jawline laviciously.

**The worst part of all this, little Artanis, is that it will be tempting, should the Lord of the Rings fall, to blame all of this on him, or on that monstrous former lord of his. He and his former master cannot create, only mar that which exists. We did not become what we are now because of them, they awoke what was there to be awakened, and let it run rampant for its own sake.**

Another lick on the other side of her jawline, and she felt his erection through his trousers, rubbing against her as she whimpered, tears flowing freely.

**Manwe was always weak, incapable of truly ruling without another doing it for him. Varda was always obsessed with satisfying her difficulties with him by welcoming others into their bed, but so long as the fetters of Eru held, she would never do it. Nessa and Tulkas were proverbial for still greater dissatisfaction and for the weakness of his loins and yet Nessa is freed and the mother of a growing brood and a new Vala has arisen, the Valaquendi.**

He laughed, coldly and sadly.

**Vana was always so unhappy that I spent such time away uncaring of her needs that she ran to the strongest, hardiest beings there are, the only ones with resistance equal to yours and to your followers shielded by the Five Lords and is now happily married to the greatest of the Dwarf-Lords left.**

A tear ran down his face for a moment and he moved his left hand to start feeling up her body.

**Ulmo is detached in merely the inverse of where he was before, but nothing else has changed with him. Irmo, Vaire, Mandos, Este, they are all distant to us, and all caught in webs and weaves of fate. When his rise was fixed, they would have obeyed him regardless and none else would have altered.**

He sighed at a different level.

**Cirdan of the Teleri, a kinsman of yours has arisen to become one of our number and a better Vala actually worthy of the name than we. I suspect that when the Allfather from his Timeless Halls deems it right and he decides to strike down Gorthaur for his hubris, Cirdan shall be accounted and become one of us. Will Manwe become one of you? What of me, once the fine hunter rendered a being of sloth. Me, become this thing that haunts you and spills my soul in this false freedom as I am poised to spear my quarry and slake my lust that other things may know I bring them doom?**

His hastily slid his trousers past enough that his erection tapped at her.

**You, Cirdan, the creatures in Khazad-Dum? You show that we could, if we had really wanted to resist the chances to let the awfulness within out have done so. That is why we hate you more than anything else. We seek to bring you down to our level….**

And then in a single brutish thrust he was inside her and the pain led Galadriel to see white even with her body’s permanent receptiveness.

He thrust into her for two hours that stretched out to her like years, his thrusts each a deep punctuation both of his conquest and her impotence to resist it. Galadriel heard the deeper messages from Orome, and felt a strange fire burning within her even as her body gave his thrusts the reward they did not deserve, nor had they truly earned. He was right, in the end. She had never worn her Ring, even if the power of the conquered Valar, and more to the point that of the Weaver and Mandos, meant that she could destroy or discard it more than any of the others and kept it around her at all times.

This was more than any of the lords of the Powers had managed in spite of all their gifts. She did not understand why she was blessed with such endurance, but blessed she was. For all their power over her, for all of her suffering, for all of her entrapment, she had endured Valarin centuries in this hellscape of a place, becoming the conquest of the Elder King, if a few pathetic thrusts using her tits or her ass in that twisted fashion he used qualified as a conquest, and the far more addictive pleasures of Varda.

On one occasion, Cirdan had even come in with Nessa during the earlier part of her current pregnancy and the memory of Nessa’s taste and of her willingly submitting to her and Cirdan’s curiosity in seeing how far it might go with her obedience to the current King of Arda and his Queen. It went much further than she had anticipated, and so was this. Orome was not the suave, sleek powerhouse who had beaten Tulkas in wrestling matches in stories of the old Valar, though honors were even and it was a coin toss if cunning or strength prevailed in any given match. Now he was a bloated thing with a neck that merged with his chin, bulging eyes, a scraggly beard, and a belly that nearly suffocated her in the weight of his presence.

And equally unfortunately for her with the God-Emperor on his throne in catatonia, he might have shrunk himself but he had the true stamina of a Vala, not the short and humiliating kind that Mairon had given them for his own amusement and to see them lowered as far as he could lower them. Her breathing was inconsistent, ragged, and alternated between hyperventilating and great deep gasps, occasionally stuttering in perfect unity with his thrusts. So too were her hips, though her tears never stopped and in a few cases Orome’s wine-saturated breath went along with his tongue as he licked them straight from her cheek, giving her a cruel smile and then kissed her mercilessly.

To think that she had thought that being bun-fucked, as Mairon dubbed what Manwe had taken to doing to her, in front of Arda’s true king and the Vala the Elves had once revered most of any as the apex of shame to her. Now she was habituated to an absence of clothing, had become the lay of any in Valinor who dared stake claims to her and being scrunched up against a wall taking a truly forgehammer-worthy set of thrusts was just another day and another shame visited upon her by the changes awakened in the Valar.

Once, her uncle had awoken in her a desire to explore the wider world and to build a kingdom of her own. Now, if she ever managed to escape the Undying Realms she would find it hard, if not impossible, to ever stray from Celeborn’s side and she was so deeply grateful that a husband who knew how shamed she was still loved her.

**That’s another thing you do that goads us all, save perhaps him on the throne. Your spouse remains faithful to you. He loves you, reveres you. He does not care what you have fallen into and been made to become. Ours? We would have been so blessed had that been so. Now my wife is Durin’s and Nessa is Queen with the newest of our rank, and her marriage to Tulkas is nothing.**

**And YOU. STILL. HAVE. YOUR. HUSBAND. Even when he does know, and feels even if he does not see, how much suffering you endure.**

As he was getting ready to cum inside her, Galadriel’s eyes met him and they were full of hate. Hate, and she was still unbroken.

**Here’s another load of cum in that cunt, Artanis. I hope you enjoy the reality that without Arda’s master, you are going to be taken by anyone who wishes you.**

As she felt his cum inside her, her eyes rolled and she passed out. Smiling over her, the bloated Orome took her and slung her over his shoulder, not caring that some of his cum smeared his clothes. He took her to Irmo and Este, leaving her at the steps of their residence. They stepped out and saw her and his bloated form smiling at them, and with a look of delight they dragged her into that realm.

Galadriel later found it a mercy that so much of the months of the God-Emperor’s absence and the Cirdan-Lordship passed in Irmo and Este’s realm, spending time in surrealistic elements of pleasure that were overwhelming and finding herself in the land of dreaming able, finally, to see and make contact, even temporarily, with Celeborn.

_In the dream they were together in an ideal Lothlorien, and she wore her dignified backless white robe, as he wore the regal clothing her maidens wove for him. They knew it was a dream and that their truthful appearances, clothing-wise, were much lesser. They did not care. He kissed her hand, and she felt it like it was his true lips, smiling sadly._

_“I do know what the Demon-King’s corrupted Valar are doing to you, my love. How could I not know?”_

_Her vision swam even in the dream but he dried her eyes, his hand comfortingly on her cheek._

_“You are not what they have done to you. I do not love you for your body, splendid though it is. Nor for the daughter and the granddaughter that we have in our place of safety.”_

_She nodded, her face still as marked with sorrow as his own._

_“Are Celebrian and Arwen still safe?”_

_“They are, and Elrond with us.”_

_“Elros must be relieved.”_

_“He is, though he is weary. Eru, he says, will only allow him to die and leave the throne when the Demon-King falls.”_

_“They have heard from Him?”_

_“Yes. They do not say when He will move but that he will, and the world’s tyrant will fall/”_

_She sighed in relief._

_“I am not broken, love. Only defiled, physically.”_

_“Not even thus. Your body is not defiled by one who takes you, they defile themselves. You are as pure to me as when we met in Doriath, and you will always be. The Valar cannot change that, even under the Demon-King’s works.”_

The dream faded but it gave her hope…..and the roving eye of the God-Emperor a new quarry to seek, and a hostage to wield against Galadriel in one final test of her strength for when he awoke. In his catatonia he remained, watching his realm see Cirdan and Nessa exert their strength and hitting the hard ceiling that he had built in his favor with the Ring. He was awed that absent his direct control they had done that much, and vowed that Cirdan would be honored for it and not punished and all records of Tulkas as the spouse of Nessa erased that Cirdan would be hers, retrospectively.

Some part of the old Mairon from before Melkor’s cruelties felt relief that there were signs that the Valar were there, even as Gorthau in the whole sought to extend his cruelties even with his mercies, and even as for all that was changed, Nessa’s former love for Tulkas would be destroyed absent the Rings. That satisfaction and that victory not even Eru could change, now. So too the change in Orome, who had gone from being the huntsman to retaining his bloat, and absent his direct control, made no effort to find his horn nor to ride his steed and to go forth seeking to destroy monsters. Orome never accepted that his transformation from huntsman to drunkard and glutton was the true element in Vana’s decision, and Mairon’s view was that such a personality was in no small part unlikely to change with or without the power of the Rings.

Two Valarin weeks later Galadriel was released from the realm of Irmo and Este, finding herself staring into the starlight-gaze of Varda Elentari, and gulping from fear and exhaustion, wishing that the sorrows she endured would stop and slow down, that her body would get some rest. Varda’s obsidian hued body put a single finger on her lips, and she looked at her with caution as Varda simply took her within her night-shadows, conveying her back to their house.

My husband serves the God-Emperor on his Throne, ensuring that he wants for nothing as he recovers and regains his strength. All I have sought to bed have turned me down but you, little Quendi, will not dare do this.

Galadriel stared blankly, her stare dulled by fear and sorrow, and Varda smiled as she shoved her on the bed roughly, lowering her body onto Galadriel’s with a contented cooing of pleasure.

**Yesss…..**

As she had been trained to do by Este and Varda herself, Galadriel placed her hands firmly on the Valier’s hips, ad her tongue went fully to work, as the Star-Queen murmured in a continual low thrumming sound of pleasure, her hands moving through hair that became flushed with the visions of starlight as did her body. Ashamed as she was to admit it, Galadriel deeply enjoyed the prospects of making Varda Elentari pleased with her, and there was nothing more delicious than the juices from between her divine thighs.

She was indisputably Celeborn’s wife, but even the most sexless person would have found themselves incapable of not enjoying the taste of the Star-Queen. It was not like even her own juices, which she had tasted from Celeborn more than once. It was difficult to imagine, and to explain, precisely how this was unlike anything a mortal body could produce and after centuries of brutal mistreatment in Valinor, she was in no position to try to sort it out. It offered her the closest equivalent to a genuine, deeper pleasure that she knew. With so little available to her where she was and when she was, there was something to be said for settling for what she could get. And there was more than something in the flush that coursed through her at the thought that the once-revered Elbereth, now the Varda she feared and yes, loathed, was so deeply reliant on her mouth and hands and on having her to claim for her own pleasures.

Galadriel would eat and drink when and as fed by Varda and would not be free from her side until the God-Emperor wakened.

So passed fifty Valarin years, during which Cirdan Valaquendi ruled in justice and fairness, and found that with a careful effort and timing, he could hallow on the Holy Mountain to Illuvatar and offer for the sins of Mortals and the Valar, and from this a flock of the Eagles, not seen in Valinor in the entire span since the last had flown East, flew around the skies of Valinor for three days and three nights, and for six days and six nights more did clouds take on vast eagle-like fashion. The servants of Mairon cringed and hid, and the Valar, even the broken Manwe, were encouraged.

It was likewise said that Nessa the Swift had her Lightning-speed fully restored to her for the first time since before the return of Sulimo, and in the form of her own though sparks of her light were visible through the whole of Aman and words of encouragement said. All of this the God-Emperor saw from his Throne, and both his anger and his curiosity arose. Master of the Material plane he was, particularly when able to fully move and rely upon the whole of his powers. Here, when recuperating the expense of the loss in driving away the mortal shell of the monstrous thing that had beset Arda since it had tried to slay his former lord, he saw that the one considered, and wrongfully so the least among the Valar was able to not only remove his Ring from her finger and to reset the clock as far back before his ascension as it was possible for him to expect, and more than.

Stunned, Gorthaur witnessed the re-forestation of parts of Valinor he had had Yavanna herself denude as her gifts surged out and the harmony and singing of Nature itself heralding the return and the resurrection of the gifts of its masters. The air was cleaner and the realm was more pleasant to the eyes of those not beholden to the old gifts of Angband than it had been in centuries. For the first time since his creation of the Rings and diffusion of them, Mairon’s heart knew doubt, and fear. Had he truly ensnared the Valar, or had they ensnared themselves and let his Rings take fall for their own natures? If Nessa could do this, what could Sulimo do? What would Tulkas do, for that matter? Whatever their problems he had loved Nessa, and loved her dearly. Now she was wed to another and happily the mother of five children, each of whom had greater shares of gifts than had the famed Tinuviel who had laid his master low, and each of them working to aid their mother and father.

The fiftieth year lapsed and the majestic bulk of Gorthaur, God-Emperor of Arda, blinked on his great throne as the Elder King made a sound somewhere between breath and sob and his Ring flashed in a much distinct sense. Nessa, pregnant with her sixth child, and visibly so, danced where she had won Tulkas’s heart before not for her and then the air had thickened and the ring around her neck started to weigh on her.

The look of sorrow on her face stood out, and Cirdan bowed his head in sadness as she gracefully halted her dance, and placed the Ring back on her finger, as did Aule and Yavanna with theirs. All four of them then saw Manwe, still possessing elements of his majesty, which the God-Emperor curiously had not ordered him to diminish quite yet, as the Elder King bade them in a forbidding tone to go to the Mahanxanar to receive the judgment of the God-Emperor.

With soft tread and looks of fear on their faces, the four arrived. The sight of Gorthaur swollen to Vala proportions and wielding the blade that took the hand of Melkor in the Fall of Thangorodrim did not ease their minds. Nor did the sight of Tulkas chained before the throne, one chain at his neck with a collar, another around his erect, weeping cock.

In the eyes of Gorthaur were many emotions, and a fraught silence seemed to grip the world. The One flashed as he spoke:

**_Kneel._ **

Against the will of all of them, they did kneel and he spoke:

**_Cirdan Valaquendi, Nessa Mother of the Half-Ainu, you have defied the words of your God-Emperor. You have sought to reverse the great work that I have done and to restore what you believe the old Valinor was. Because of your will and your influence, your realm breathes anew with the breath of trees, trees planted by the rebel Yavanna Kementari._ **

His gaze focused on the regal form of Yavanna, whose gaze even with the power of his Ring burning on her finger and the odor of scorched wood from that finger was regal, detached, magnificent.

**_You defied me by not merely replanting a single tree but by restoring your woods to life. I personally made you chop them down, and instead the moment your Emperor became less direct a force, you restored them._ **

Then his gaze tilted to Cirdan:

**_In carrying out these acts, you are guilty of treason against the God-Emperor and the realm of all Arda that I have forged_**.

He took the Vala-Slayer and removed it from its scabbard as the unhallowed runes upon it blazed into a bright greenish light that fitted ill with the sanctity of the chamber. He raised the blade and placed it near Cirdan’s shoulder.

_You cannot kill him, God-Emperor!_

Nessa’s cry was anguished, and the tyrant turned toward her.

**_You and he conducted treason against me. What punishment would you have me wield?_ **

_Punish me, not him. He could have done nothing without my actions!_

**_This is true,_** the words of Mairon thundered. **_The Valaquendi is but an Elf, not one of the Order save by his ties to you and to your offspring._**

In a blinding speed his blade was next to her neck.

**_The punishment for treason is death_**.

Nessa’s eyes blazed defiance and she who had pled for mercy for her husband pled for none for herself. Her defiance blazed in spite of the power of the Ring and lightning flashed and the sword at her neck slipped, as it slammed into the ground with a thunderous boom and a chasm opened, the Crack of Sorrow.

Gorthaur’s smile was cold.

**_Very well, then._ **

He grabbed Nessa by her hair and lifted her up, and Nessa blazed further into full Valar height, even as this meant that her form towered over Mairon’s in majesty and the impression restored something of the reality of a Maia, even the mightiest of them all, and the weakest of the Valar. Her beauty in her sixth pregnancy stood out that much more, and the light within her burned the eyes of Gorthaur, who had to close his, and hold his other hand before his face to block it.

**_Traitors._ **

His hiss was lessened by the divine light of Nessa and his reeling backwards, letting her go. She seemed to stumble forward, and Gorthaur for a moment considered letting her fall and lose her child as punishment, but his hand moved out and righted her, forcing her back to her knees even in her full divine majesty with the ever greater power of his Ring at his disposal.

The effort left his Fana visibly panting and greyish lines of exhaustion forming on his face that he dispelled after shaking his head.

Then, removing the sword from the chasm where it remained in perfectly upright fashion by the enchantments on it, he threw his head back and laughed in a booming sound that left all those gathered confused, as the Palantirs blazed into light.

**_Cirdan Valaquendi and Nessa the Mother of the Half-Ainu, for your defiance of my orders and the revelation of the true strength within you, the last of the old Valinor. For your strength and for your loyalty to the old ways, you are given the just reward. Exile. From this day, you are not to set foot again on the land of Aman or in Valinor, nor within the least sight of it in the eyes of a Vala. And all your bastard spawn of the Holy and the Flesh-bound shall go with you._ **

**_Get ye gone from my sight and the presence of my power._ **

And then as an afterthought he told her:

**_As Lord of the Rings, only those loyal to me may wear my Rings that grant thee enhanced power and majesty within thy spheres. Remove the Ring of Lightning, Traitor-Valier, and leave it at my feet._ **

With bemusement evident in her face, Nessa did, gasping in relief and wonder that the Ring’s might removed from her own was not a prison but a blessing. With her husband and all five of her children, Nessa strode from Aman and the citadel of the God-Emperor’s power singing in gratitude, and they took to a ship and sailed away from the Blessed Land singing in praise of Eru Illuvatar.

The hymns of gratitude and honor to the Allfather on his great throne in the Timeless Halls were heard for the first time since the War of Wrath and in the divine throat of Nessa all Arda echoed with them. The sound echoed out into the very realm beyond Time and Space.

THE TIMELESS HALLS:

**Will ye intervene now?**

The great personage of Illuvatar, maker of all that was and is and would be, master of the Secret Fire looked with interest on the changes of his children.

**Not yet, my son.**

**Why not, Father? The dark angel has sought to usurp the position of the Elder King. He has done blasphemies**.

The Allfather’s presence ‘looked’ at his son though the very nature of Illuvatar transcended the understanding of any of the Ainur.

**No My son, he has worked to the benefit of My designs, as has Melkor before him. All that is is because I will it, and none other.**

**How can this benefit anyone, Father?**

**Melkor discovered arts that are forbidden, Arts that permitted the lesser orders to master the greater. He came too close to those without Ea, and they consumed him, and turned him against My will, and gave him the madness to seek the secret fire that is Mine alone.**

**I do not see-**

**No you do not. The rebel has taken these arts nearly as far as they can go. He has become master and found that the realm he rules is much less delightful than is conquering it. He instigates wars to feel that fury, he broke the shard of that without Ea to feel that same desire. For Me to intervene too soon, My son, is to reset the clock upon creation and these arts shall be rediscovered and all that you see shall unfold again.**

**All of the torment, all of the sorrows and plagues unleashed. My children in flesh, the Valar, would fall as they fell before, and it would seem a novelty to them.**

Ah. The commander of the hosts within the Halls nodded sagely.

**So then, Father, when it is done…..**

**When it is done, the power that was gained in madness shall fall, and I shall grant to the first Children an extra age to remain, that the monsters he has forced my first King to wield be destroyed.**

**And those who fell?**

**Even you of the Ainur are not immune to temptations, particularly within the flesh. Do not judge your brothers and sisters, My son. Were you to face the forces at their enmity, and the arts that were given to Melkor and to his servant, you would fall no less than they and your sins be no less great than theirs.**

**Soon, my son, the servant of Melkor will tire of his rule and then those arts will be undone and his wraith shall go to the Halls of Mandos, there to dwell on the transcience of power. He has not sought to usurp My realm as his master did.**

**Why?**

**He saw what his master became and had no desire to follow that path. He has been a creature of material and metal as his first lord was, and so remains he, in the end. Those that fell and made no effort to rise shall be judged. And she who was seen as the least has become the greatest, though she knows it not, yet.**

**And the Elf?**

**He has proven worthy of a thing that surpasses your understanding, and shows that in the end, My son, I never left the Children, nor the Valar. The weak can outplay the strong.**

THE MAHANXANAR, VALINOR:

With Nessa and Cirdan cast out, the gaze of Gorthaur turned to Yavanna and Aule.

**_Of all the children of the Allfather, I have been kindest to the two of you. I have asked the very least of you, Aule Forgefather, as you were my former lord. And I spared your wife the treatment of the other Valier, for she is yours, and I have always had respect for her, and she showed me her loyalty in hewing down the forests of Valinor to build my fleet._ **

His gaze fixed squarely upon her.

**_I was clearly too lenient to the both of you. Behold the fate of he once the Valiant, who laid low my former Lord._ **

Their eyes returned to the chained and aroused Tulkas, as Gorthaur kicked him in the side with a sudden backward motion and he fell to the ground.

**_He is strong still, for all that I have punished him I freed him of a broken marriage and his own infirmity in a single area, and within that emptiness that all of them empowered by my Rings wield, he has never broken, he has never truly done so. No less than Nessa has he been strong. He has been made the fool and his infirmity exposed, but that does not weaken him, it merely exposes the singular weakness that he possesses._ **

**_And now see that weakness made bare. He exposed before you in his shame, she who he wed once and has left him gone from the Kingdom of Aman as I wield it. Strongest of all of you, and he has become a chained lapdog before the seat of his master._ **

His gaze bored deep into Yavanna’s.

**_The Elder King has become addicted to the pleasures of the beasts you made, as the former spouse of the Huntsman has to the Dwarves that my former lord made and succeeded in making. He won where my former lord lost._ **

The fanged smile was broad and horrifying, Yavanna trembling slightly and her tits jiggling as she saw Melkor take a circlet from Manwe, who had arrived. He placed it on Yavanna’s head and she screamed, her eyes blazing with power that accepted its caging and she sagged.

**_You are bound as the Elder King was bound in Angband of old. I give you a task of penance that will be the only task demanded of both of you. Instead of death or exile, as with the Elder King when he wished to seduce the wife of Turgon, you must lie with the beasts you have made. Sleep with the greatest of males of all the kind with the largest organs, in both of your orificies. Return to Valinor only when this task is fulfilled._ **

His smile became colder and still more cruel.

**_For this task, the creature who serves as warden for the Elder King and Star-Queen, Moratar, will be the first of the beasts. Go to him, lie with him, and do not show your face in Aman after doing so until your task is fulfilled._ **

**_Your punishment, my lord, is that your wife shall spend the time until her task is done with beasts……_ **

And then a sudden motion of the sword cut away Aule’s codpiece, as a device with wicked shape from the forges of Angband sealed around his cock and he gasped.

**_You shall wear this, which shall keep you in a permanent state of arousal that you cannot slake. To seek to touch maidens, men, or beasts shall see you shudder and become weak, and your arousal shall peak and reach its most painful when your wife has known her new lovers and taken their emissions within her._ **

His grim smile became grimmer as he said casually:

**_Perhaps your eldest children shall be fawns, or Mumakil. Or eggs of the Fastitocalcon._ **

With that and a snap of his fingers, Yavanna began her tread to Moratar’s mansion.

Aule stood up, and Mairon paused with his left pointer claw on the tip of his chin.

**_Until she has finished, you shall not cover your genitals and leave your cage for all to see._ **

Aule, his teeth gritted and face pale, nodded.

With that the God-Emperor resumed his seat on the Obsidian Throne and told Tulkas:

**_Rise, cuckold. Your former wife is gone. Resume your place in your mansion, and I hope that you enjoy the company I have assigned to you._ **

Tulkas moved back to his house, now restored to him, with a somewhat more akin to his older smile grin on his leonine face, only to arrive and see a vast troll, one of Manwe’s grandsons, just over half a size bigger than he was and far more well hung waiting in a modified and crude troll-chair.

“Hi…..Uncle.”

Tulkas twitched, his eye spasming slightly.

“You haven’t really been fucked in a very long while, bar little times with Quendi.”

His massive erection rose, and the troll stood up and walked over to Tulkas.

“My master regrets the oversight, but he has had much greater matters to concern him than the least of the Valar, all brawn and no brain.”

With that the troll forced the cock-ringed Tulkas down, spreading his legs in two deft motions of stupendous strength.

“Don’t hold back on the screams, my master and your King doesn’t care.”

With that, too, the troll reached around and removed the cock-ring just as his cock jammed itself inside Tulkas’s ass and the long-constrained orgasm spewed all over his floor, the troll laughing as his cock wedged in to his balls with a single thrust.

“My uncle, how delightful. I would have thought so manly and brave a Vala would have had an ass far less wielded by others like this. When you can’t punch your way out of a problem you are useless, aren’t you?”

With that, the Troll put his hand around Tulkas’s throat and began to rut into him pleasurably, Tulkas’s hips moving in perfect union with his body. As he groaned in shame, Tulkas knew that his restored-back-to-weakness cock would splatter the floor with a veritable small lake of his cum and that his guts would probably wind up holding as much of it from this troll as he released. He sank forward, neck against the troll’s elbow, and let the troll rut into him with coarse laughter and biting at the edge of his ear, and indeed soon, each thrust of the troll was matched by an orgasm from him.

“Yess….such a good boy,” it whispered, licking his earlobe and then biting it hard as well as Tulkas trembled. From Nessa leaving him for the Elf and becoming the most prolific mother among the Valier, to this. To becoming a troll’s toy and rewarding it with spurts of cum sufficient that in its eyes, he was nothing-

“That’s right uncle, that’s what you are. Nothing. Wife left you, and now your weak little dick serves something stronger and bigger than you. It’s how it always is, uncle. There is always something and someone stronger, wiser, better. To you, and for you, I am that someone.”

Tulkas finally cried tears of defeat, though the core of strength within him smouldered, waiting for its opportunity to be unleashed. The courage of his wife became his inspiration and golden light to guide him through this.

LAST REFUGE OF THE ELVES:

Within a week of the punishment of Aule and Yavanna and the restoration of the God-Emperor, the figure of Gorthaur the God-Emperor arrived at the gates of the Elven refuge. His form was not that of his familiar dark armor, but instead that of a great monster with glowing red eyes, vast slavering fangs, more glowing red eyes on his shoulder, the Vala-Slayer in its scabbard at his side. He wore a loose tunic and trousers that did not quite go past his ankles, where his clawed digitigrade feet were surprisingly avian-like, but larger than any bird, even the Great Eagles.

**_I demand Arwen Undomiel come forth._ **

It was then that one of the Istari appeared before him. Curunir, the Maia of his order, the sole one to stand against their lords.

**She is not yours to claim, Gorthaur.**

**_I am the God-Emperor of Arda, recognized as such by the Valar. She will come forth or I shall take my sword and with it kindle a fire and burn all the Quendi here to ashes save her, and take her anyway. And you shall have to reclaim a new Fana all over again, Curumo._ **

Curunir snarled and raised his staff, glowing, only to see a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll do it.”

**Do you know what he’d ask of you?**

“I have an idea, yes. My grandfather has given away enough of the fate of my grandmother.” She sighed.

“And I have seen the Queen of the Woods making love to a bear, and greatly enjoying herself with one of those wretched Rings on her finger. He will kill them all, no matter how powerful your defense, Curunir. You are protecting them here. So am I. He won’t kill me.”

**You have too much faith in him.**

“Not at all, but I can think of only one reason why this self-proclaimed God-Emperor would demand my presence.”

She crossed her arms in front of her own breasts, modestly tied down to play down her figure and her beauty in this world of monsters.

“She has spent centuries tormented in your realm and you haven’t broken her, have you?”

The snarl from the God-Emperor made her laugh, a single peal that made the God-Emperor and Curunir start.

“If she will not, I will not. We shall return, I believe. My dreams have showed me.”

With that, Arwen took herself in the arms of Gorthaur, which shifted to the talons of a great scaled flying form and underwent the journey through the cold skies, and found herself in the changed and defiled Valinor that Mairon had remade in his image and in his likeness.

She had hoped for a glimpse of Nessa or Cirdan the Hero-King, but they were not to be found. Instead she had landed on the former Holy Mountain, there to see herself in front of the place that had been the mansion of the Elder King and the Star Queen. Gorthaur opened the door with an eerie caress that activated runes and in that place she saw the Elder King tied down and defiled by a monstrous thing, neither quite Warg nor man, blue as his own thought-form. One of Carcharoth’s distant descendants, claiming its sire in a moment of wicked inspiration. The Elder King panted, tongue lolling from his face in delight.

The Star-Queen was bound by things neither ropes nor tendrils but somewhere in between, gagged with a strange device that had her own tongue lolling. And in front of the bed was her grandmother, half-reclined with a chain and a collar around her neck.

“Oh no, not her. Please not her,” the sight of her grandmother’s eyes filling with tears and her trying to move, lunging at Mairon to plead “Please not her, hasn’t my family suffered enough?”

It was with that that Mairon ordered her to sit.

From a place on his mantle, he opened a box and revealed a ring wreathed in lightning.

**_The least of the Valar once had this Ring. It enhanced her power, and it blessed her innate fertility with the greatest fortune. Six children has she born her husband, perhaps more. It is a Ring meant for one of them, but you have their blood, little Undomiel. Yours is the blood of Melian. If I put upon you this Ring, you will gain the power of a Vala. You will either become more splendid beyond the mirror of your deceased relative, or you will die, burned from within by the lightning and your skeleton left for your grandmother to gaze upon as a final sign of her failure and that of your line._ **

The Ring thrummed with a terrible power and she looked at him.

“If you wish me to plead for my fate, I will not. My grandmother was not afraid to face your games, Sauron. I am not either.”

He turned to Galadriel.

**_If she will not take it, you will._ **

Arwen’s composure cracked and she immediately moved with a blinding speed to shield herself and her grandmother’s nudity, which she conspicuously refused to gaze upon, as she did the sounds of the Warg-male fucking the Elder King and the babbling of the Star-Queen.

“No! She has suffered enough. You brought me here as a test? Then you have failed. Release us both.”

**_You think yourself Luthien in truth. Here in the monster’s lair, in the citadel of his great kingdom, surrounded by his debaucheries you seek to ensnare him, to give him orders._ **

He sat on the same chair she did.

**_You cannot take my essence any more than she could absent the Ring, but there are….compensations._ **

He pointed to Varda.

**_Bring the Star-Queen to an orgasm, and I will let you go. Deny this, and she will take the Ring and if she dies, her blood is on your hands._ **

Arwen glared.

“And if I refuse to do anything you say?”

**_I just told you. She will take the Ring and become the new Nessa, or she will die, and you will cradle her bleached skull._ **

Arwen glared, then sighed.

“And if I please Elbereth?”

**_Then you will leave, knowing that for all your bluster, you still served me in the end._ **

She glared and as she went over to the Star-Queen, Mairon followed her, wanting a closer look. She whirled around and tried to attack him, only for him to grab her wrists and shove her to her knees.

**_I anticipated you would try that, so that would not count against you. In your favor, even. You’re a fighter, little Evening-star. Just like she was before all the Valar and the Orcs in Valinor knew of her flesh. Consider that if you seek further defiance._ **

Sighing, Arwen grabbed the Star-Queen’s hips, shocked and appalled when her legs spread, and then lowered herself, eating out the Star-Queen with hesitant strokes that became more successful. She had briefly experimented with the ambassador from the Greenwood, a redheaded elf-archer who had subsequently gone to fight the New Orcs and been mercilessly slain for her troubles. That skill told well for her, if the reactions of the Star-Queen were anything to say about.

Her juices tasted of…..something…wondrous and addictive, and Arwen became more focused on swallowing every last drop, her face moving with enough force that it was akin to fucking the Star-Queen, whose body reacted in visible pleasure, flush with starlight. Arwen smiled and her motions intensified, lips, nose, fingers, all carefully and visibly at work. It was only a few minutes and the Star-Queen came, and she drank down everything greedily….but then she came again and then again. A Valarin hour of endless juices gushing down her throat and all over her hair, face, and shoulders, staining her dress and revealing how her tits were bound to limit their size and then she was moved away.

**_You defied me, Undomiel. So you do live up to your appearance. Take your grandmother, the both of you shall fly on the backs of Smaug Calamity-Lord, and you shall return. Get thee gone from my realm, Elf-whores._ **

Galadriel was not allowed clothing and Arwen no change of her own, and the two were very silent as they flew, Galadriel’s hands on her granddaughter’s taught stomach, her face on her shoulder. Wetness marked the copious flows of tears of sorrow, anger, relief, joy. A thousand emotions warring and none of them victorious, and a long flight and the feeling of the coarse blue fabric of her granddaughter’s dress.

She did not move her hands much, only up and down that stomach, and where at first uncomfortable, Arwen looked at Galadriel, her eyes softening when she realized her grandmother was trying to assure herself that this was real, that after centuries in the fallen kingdom she was free. Smaug made his descent and released them from his back at the barrier of the realm, then flew back without a single word.

Galadriel raised herself to her feet, shaken and shaking, arm interwoven with Arwen, who took several deep breaths, trying to lessen the impact of the taste of Varda’s pleasure, and the cravings it had instilled in her. Cravings that would never die, and leave her preferring other women to men. They took steps and then Curunir and Celeborn were before them.

Galadriel burst into new tears and tried to run in shame from her husband seeing herself and the clear traces of stains of…..something… on her granddaughter, and that reaction convinced Curunir and Celeborn immediately that this was the true Galadriel, for a false one would have tried to emulate a being who had not been so in a very long time. Celeborn ran to hold her as Galadriel, released from Arwen’s arm, tried to run and he caught her.

“You are here with me, my love.”

“I’m so……I was….”

“It is on the Valar that this was done to you. You never broke. You are mine, and I am yours.”

Galadriel’s wet eyes met his, and they kissed, for the first time in truth and inf lesh in centuries, the kiss very deep and passionate, Galadriel unconcerned for her nudity as she wrapped a leg around him, the kiss one that reflected some of what her body had been conditioned to endure in Valinor.

Curunir, for his part, went to Arwen, who broke for a moment and held him and cried, apologizing softly for the display of her weakness.

**You went into the dragon’s lair and came out with your grandmother free. And all you did was satiate one thing of the so-called God-Emperor. You were not weak, Undomiel. You were strong, so very, very strong. And I am as proud of you as in time to come so shall your mother, father, and grandparents be.**

She smiled, tearfully, and they stepped into the realm of the Elves. Galadriel would don her first true concealing Elven robe, even if a far coarser and cruder material than the old days with a gasp of awe and relief, content to have her freedom of motion obstructed, and amazed and slightly shaken that none viewed her as defiled. The marks of her torments told on her soul, and Galadriel’s sorrowful face that contrasted with her beauty gave strength to hidden stories of the old ways, and of the old paths.

Galadriel had returned, and to her came in a brief embassy from the Havens Cirdan the Shipwright, whose face was marked by the first stage of a beard’s growth, and Nessa the Vala, their youngest child holding Nessa’s hand and looking at her in awe.

“She’s free, isn’t she?”

Nessa nodded in a smile of wonder and delight, and as she went to hold Galadriel in an embrace, the Elf-maiden stiffened. Nessa stepped back, and showed her that her hands were empty, then put her own hands just above her own womb.

“I too have suffered for the God-Emperor’s dreams. Even with the husband I now love, the sorrows are real. He took me, once. So did King Ingwe. I know that shame, Artanis, and I do not begrudge it to you.”

Her smile was soft and tears, golden and crackling the air with lightning, were in her eyes likewise. You are strong, Artanis, Lady of the Teleri. You endured, and he did not break you. And so did she.

Galadriel gratefully took the embrace of Nessa, who was no longer clad in the fine weave of Valinor, nor in a form of her own though, but in a form akin to a very tall woman of Quendi descent. Yet her eyes were crackling golden lightning and displayed the truth of who she was, and in them, Galadriel knew not the fear and shame of Valinor as it is, but a trace of what it was.

She reached up to caress Nessa’s cheek.

“You too were the strongest of them all. It is why you were exiled. They, we, were so wrong to see you as the least.”

Nessa’s smile was wan.

_You were not. I was and I am the least of Valar and Valier alike. I am just the only one who endured the shames I was made to do and sought to undo them._

Galadriel’s lip quirked.

“You tell me I am not dirty. And I accept that. Believe me when I tell you you have proven yourself a greater Aratar than those entrusted with the deeds.”

Lighting fell down Nessa’s cheeks, and Galadriel and Nessa shared a deeper hug.

Nine and twenty mortal days did they remain, before sailing back to the Havens, Galadriel and Arwen remembering Nessa’s parting words.

Judgment will come. He on high will summon you and you shall see what He wishes.

A VALARIN CENTURY LATER ON THE HOLY MOUNTAIN:

After a century of rule of Aman without his King of the Absences, and oversight of all Arda and the endless peace, without wars, all kneeling before him, God-Emperor Sauron abruptly one day ordered the Valar to leave the mountain and to stand with the Quendi in Valinor outside its confines. His monsters enforced the order, and all the Valar left and stood, Yavanna taking with her the youthful fawn, bear, and on her shoulder was perched a fledging Great Eagle. None of the Valar nor the Quendi had said anything when she had returned with a belly heavily swollen, and none judged her, for all by now knew how futile defying the will of the God-Emperor was.

On the mountain, thunder began to sound, though no lightning.

**_Eru Illuvatar, I, God-Emperor of Arda challenge you!_ **

**_You have allowed me to defy and to defile your grand vision! Eight hundred years have I ruled an endless peace, the end of all strife and suffering in Arda. I have been ruler, and I despise rule. I wished conquest, not rule, for rule is a task that I…..I cannot do._ **

**_I have been a fool! I thought if I could master the Elder King I would do what my former lord had never done, and in truth I did. Arda was and is mine, I have rebuilt it in my image, knowing the order and peace that I have given it._ **

**_So, O Mighty One, whose music I was part of the choir thereof, on behalf of the very realm I have defiled, I name thee craven and useless! Where were you when your king was made to whelp beasts of the field, and become dependent upon them by myself and my master? Where were you when the Valar were reduced from the splendid Powers that guided the world to the debauched monsters I have made them, defiling each other and your creation? Your will joined Orome and Vana, Tulkas and Nessa, and I have sundered them._ **

**_I have been greater than you, I have shaped this world and reforged it. Where then, O Illuvatar, art Thou? Thou hast been faithless to Thy creation, I name thee Oathbreaker, weakling, failure. You have abandoned your creation for a servant of Melkor the True God, who defied your Music. He defied and defiled your song, I defiled your creation._ **

**_Eru Allfather, Absent King, weaker than the Elder King I have made into whore and lover of the beasts and the Beast-Father, if Thou carest for Thine creation, smite me, unmake my Rings, grant me peace. Nearly a Thousand Years I have reigned, and all that I have done is to entrap myself in a firmer cage than my lord did in his fortress._ **

**_I name Thee-_ **

In the Timeless Halls, Eru smiled, for the time had come. In his hand a bolt of Unmaking gathered, powerful and it induced fear and trembling among the Ainur who dwelt with him above all that was in Ea. The skies rolled like a scroll for a moment and then in a single shattering moment a vast glowing blast of something like light and unlight mixed together that was nether and both and all things smashed into the Lord of the Rings.

The Ring shattered and with it, all of its imitators, and the overstretched souls of the Dwarves and Men who had taken the Rings sighed in relief as they were sent to their judgment to come in the eye of Illuvatar. The Valar stared as in a mirror darkly for a moment and then awareness of what had overcome them hit, as it did with all Arda and Aman, where the power of the God-Emperor and the nature of his reign were taken as given and even as just in the eyes of all save the Faithful.

Aman and Arda and Numenor were full of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and in Numenor, the Eternal King, Elros Tar-Minyatur, breathed his last with a joyful smile as he accepted the gift of Illuvatar.

Such was the nature of what was changed that in a moment unusual for the Grand Scheme but meant to be from the star, Illuvatar made his first descent to the world he made, clad in the form of _his_ own thought. As a great and tall Black Man he appeared, darkness equal to Varda’s own, darkness pure and holy.

Before Him at the Mahanaxanar were gathered all of the Valar, and with them Cirdan the Shipwright, Galadriel of the Teleri and the Noldor, and the nervous and ashamed face of her granddaughter. After all of them stood in silence the Istari, each contemplating the judgments to be given to all of them and to the others. Ashamed and her eyes closed until they opened and she saw Him and like all the rest fell silent, for He was immense and around him, all existence thrummed in the presence of its Maker and its Master and its true animating Fire.

Summoned first before not the Obsidian Throne of the God-Emperor but the great Pearl Throne of the Allfather were Manwe Sulimo and Varda Elentari, who before the gaze of Illuvatar felt to their knees, Manwe murmuring pleas for pardon. Eru moved his right hand, and to Manwe’s pleasure and relief, the terrible scars ripped into him by the poisoned blades of Angband were removed. After so much time and so much suffering he felt himself, the Elder King as he knew he had always been meant to be.

**My Son** , Illuvatar’s words were gentle, and compassionate. **You fell not because you were weak, but because of arts that were never meant to be the possession of those who wielded them. Great were the arts in question, drawn from that which is without my creation. Within Ea, I am the Master of all that is, but Ea itself is but a small part of something greater. Melkor, and Mairon, were given power from that Outside, and it was great enough that it had to be stretched to its limit, and removed that Arda may be renewed. It was not to you and to your failings that you were claimed by the beasts and monsters that claimed you.**

**Greatest on you, save Tulkas the Valiant, were the chains laid, and no will of yours could have overcome them. Yet, in the end, it was in your name that such evil was done, and it was the hands of another, a mortal, weak and lowly and unconcerning the will of Mairon that changed this. The King of all things is your title, and your rank, and no failure of yours. All of you among the Valar in the First and the Second Music were meant to produce offspring like the Children, it was Melkor who altered this. And it was Mairon who began to restore parts of the original design.**

**Yet you, for all that lack of choice, have been father of monsters, beasts that ravaged crops and towns and left corpses in their wake. To you shall the punishment be given that the three children of yours who are yours in spirit, though not at present in shape, shall be accounted to you.**

A motion of Eru’s hand and before them appeared a great blue Warg, the eldest son of Carcharoth, and the only of its kind to have spent the long years protecting mortals and ferrying the Istari by his ability to become the unclad wind. Then appeared a great horse, the Father of all the Great Horses, his skin the dark grey of a thundercloud and his mane lightning. His had been the will that had sent the wild horses, the first and greatest of them, to Far Harad where they had been saved, and granted the Haradrim the ability to flee the dismal powers of Tar-Mairon the God-Emperor. And last of them, a tall entity akin to a troll but most of them all like an Ent, a tree that had developed arms and legs and the long rumbling speech of his kind.

**These are your heirs, Elder King, each the firstborn and the greatest of their kind. Your reward and punishment is that of your children, those righteous are saved, and you shall watch all of the monsters forced upon you to die, and grieve for them as I shall, for they were never meant to face the fate they were, and in this, their souls shall know the peace of Mandos’s halls and one day reunite with yours.**

Manwe bowed his head and wept, and so for a moment did Illuvatar.

He spoke further:

**You, as with the Star-Queen wedded to you, have all the same for all that was forced upon you proven unworthy of the rank given to you as first and greatest. In this, your change in rank is a reflection of your greatness, and in this, all of you among the Valar save the least of you, Nessa, proved unworthy. Tulkas, as with you, had chains that none could move, and his deeds were least in malice, so they shall receive least in punishment, and for his endurance shall he receive a reward.**

**And with that, Varda Elentari, to you does My judgment turn. To you, strong chains were given, that awakened a dissatisfaction that this world and its marring awoke within you. You are greater in power and in responsibility than mortals, and to work through the problems give you would have shown you worthy of that greatness. This you did not do. You spent that time seeking release of desires that in themselves not sinful were made so in the manner you sought them. You have betrayed your husband in your lusts, and you have betrayed yourself. For this, Thy punishment with Thy husband is to become the lowliest of the Aratar, and servants to the rest. Thy title shall remain, but not to you the power, and Thy title shall become as a yoke on Thine neck.**

**To you shall children of the Valiant be born, four strong sons, in recompense for his suffering, and as a measure of what was meant for your truthful husband. Your fate has not changed, only he who among the Valar shall become the father of the four.**

Eru’s gaze turned to Aule and Yavanna.

**To you alone among the Aratar shall no change in rank be given. You were treated as lord and lady by Mairon, and you were the sole ones among the Aratar to seek to repair the ravages made. On you rested most lightly the chains, and when they were weakened for a time, you did as you ought and sought to repair the ravages of Mairon on all Arda. To you, Aule, is given a gift, you are lord of volcanoes as well as forges, that the suffering you have endured be turned to the blend of destruction and creation that is your greatest will.**

**To you, Yavanna Kementari, Queen of Nature, was given a foul punishment not unlike that given to the Elder King. He was punished for his existence, as were you. What you endured was no fault of yours but punishment from a rebel for loyalty to the true ways and the true path. To you is given an extended time for the Tree-Sheperds and trees that shall live and defend themselves against the monsters forced to be sired, and new forests raised in Valinor with your strength and labors renewed as when the world was young. To you and to your offspring shall be given a greater reward when comes the Last Battle and of Doom and Arda remade as it was always meant to be.**

**You shall be fruitful and multiply, and as fruitful among the Ainur as Nessa, wife of the Shipwright has been with mortals. Well done, Good and Loyal servants, tried in fire and refined.**

Aule and Yavanna bowed their heads and cried tears of relief.

Then Illuvatar’s gaze shifted to Ulmo.

**To you, Lord of Waters, you remain as you were. One of the Great but apart from your kin.But a single task did you fulfill for Mairon, a task that awoke within you what was meant to be awakened as is. To you, shall your reward be given in the form of a wife, though initially you did not take one…..**

From Illuvatar’s side a spirit stepped out and she became a graceful and elegant spirit of water and wonder to match Ulmo’s fearsome aspect.

**You remained from your element and your kingdom that Mairon’s power not befoul it, and in this you succeeded in defiance by passivity. To you shall be given two sons from Elentari and eight from your wife, in recognition of your strength and of your weakness. Well done, Faithful and loyal servant.**

From Ulmo the gaze of Illuvatar turned toward Nienna, whose face met Illuvatar’s stoically, no tears shed.

**Tears unnumbered have you shed, O Nienna, who save one conquest by Mairon, have fulfilled Thy role and The place most out of all the Valar. No words of condemnation have I for Thee, who endured and turned the very thing meant to enslave Thee into a thing of strength, and in this too defied Mairon passively. Such is the blindness of the servants of Melkor that defiance that is not overt is not seen as what it is. Thou hast been counsel and comfort and a bearer of sorrows. Thy reward is to rest for a time from Thy tears ,and to enter the realm of Thy brother Lorien and know relief from all that has befallen Thee.**

His gaze turned next to Irmo and Vaire.

**Upon Thou and upon Namo and Este have been burdens placed that are among the greatest and the most difficult to bear. Thou see the future and its paths, and are entrusted with the burden to ensure that it has been fulfilled. Thou hast largely avoided the path of working the ill will of Mairon, and where possible Thou gave hope. To you, Irmo, is given the reward that Thou hast become above the Elder King, and he shall be Thy footstool from time to time, and work to relieve Thee of Thy burdens.**

**To you, O Vaire, who endured the wiles of the chains upon Varda, is given the reward for thy faithfulness that thou may rest from Thine labors, and avenge upon Varda the slight given to Thee. As Manwe is footstool to Namo, the children of thy womb shall be Varda’s burden to care for, and Thou shalt have of children and childbirth all of its joys, where she shall have thy pains in birth.**

Vaire bowed, humbled, and uncertain she had been nearly so good as the Allfather believed, but if He willed it, who could stand against Him?

To Namo and to Este did Illuvatar’s gaze turn next.

**To you, Lord of Fate and of the Grave, is neither punishment nor reward due. You have fulfilled your function, as was decreed in all that is or would be. You did so not knowing My will more than at any other time, in what was by far the sorest trial received. To this is nothing more than your due and in the foul deeds of Mairon, you did no more than observe, and sought to give aid to his victims who suffered in thy Halls.**

**To you, Lady of Healing, is given the task to spearhead those who bind the wounds of the world, and to be their chieftain for two Ages. It shall be a long and a grievous road, but to you who have much to give, from you much is demanded. It is long and grievous, for yours was an active role at points in wielding his harm upon others of mortal and Ainur. Your punishment is to heal in proportion to what harm you have dealt.**

**Well done, faithful servants.**

Eru’s gaze turned next to Orome and Vana, who stood parted from her husbands and away from Orome’s still-swollen form. Eru’s speech was never full of anything but compassion, love, and sorrow. To both the words spoken were bittersweet and to Orome more bitter than sweet and to Vana more sweet than bitter.

**To thee, O Orome, my hunstman who was** -Orome stiffened at the use of the past tense- **thou has failed at thy task most of all my Valar. None of Thee could withstand thy chains, and to you the reality of thy chains meant that Thou became a glutton and a drunkard, a wastrel and one whose choice was to let Thy life end rather than yield to greater things. Thou art no more one of the Aratar, thou art now least among the Valar, and lesser in power and in role than the greatest of the Maiar. Thy wife hath found her destiny and her new kindred, thou art to remain hitherto alone and granted only fulfillment from thine own flesh, as thou sought to strengthen thy bloat.**

**To thee, O Vana, I grant thy marriage my full and unreserved blessing. Thou art the union of the children of Aule and of Yavanna, and from thy womb is built the new blessings of all the children of my adoption and their full acceptance within the children of my choice. Of all the creations of all my children, it is the children of Aule that alone remained faithful to Me, and to them I bestow the greatest of gifts, that which will be neither fate of Man nor of Elf, but a path their own of equal worth to that of Men.**

Vana bowed and then prostrated herself, murmuring thanks and gratitude with a sound like that of rushing waters.

And last, the gaze of Eru turned to Tulkas and to Nessa.

**To you and to Nessa were given tasks that Thou achieved. To you was given chains equal to those of the Elder King, but Thou did not break, no matter the humiliations upon Thee. Thou wert and thou art the Valiant, for the inward core of strength never failed, no matter that which was heaped upon the outward raiment. To Thee is given the blessing that all Valier save Thy former wife shall bear Thee offspring, as Thou were stronger than all of them, and to you is given reward in due match to that which was given as shame.**

Eru’s gaze turned to Vana and Cirdan.

He stood, and came over to them, placing His vast hands on their shoulders, which prickled with the power of the Allfather that flowed outward from Him.

**To Thee was given the greatest strength and faithfulness of the Valar, and the endurance to withstand the trials grave and terrible that came against Thee. The ruination of Thy marriage, the discovery of a new one, and the openness to seek in newness strength, and in companionship with Thy espoused, the beauty of union that can never be severed by anyone or anything. Thou it was who ruled over Arda from time to under the Rebel, and it is due to Thee that he did not leave despoliation and ruin, servile masses cowed by endless tyranny. Thou hast shown that Thou and Thy husband are no longer least of the Valar. To Thee and to Thou, Cirdan Valaquendi, are new changes. You, Nessa have become the greatest of the Aratar for Thy faithfulness has been given to it, its due. To you, Cirdan Valaquendi, Thou art accounted among the Ainur in the judgment at the end of time, and Thy nature is no longer Cirdan Valaquendi, but Cirdan Estel.**

**You alone sought to not merely test the chains but removed them as much as they could be removed when none else sought thus. To you, and for your wit and your wisdom, much is granted.**

The newly ascended Cirdan rose, in full height and splendor to match his wife, and the two clasped hands and bowed.

**Thy children are children of Mine own will, and to them it is given that they follow the will of Este and heal the world and its ravages. And to Ye is entrusted the true Writ of the Elder Kingdom, for in chains and humility thou wert the aid and the salvation of Arda, and Thou livest to the demands of thy true tasks. The Elder King and Star-Queen retain their titles, Hail to the Younger King and the Queen of Lightning!**

All knelt before the newly proclaimed monarchs, who in turn bowed humbly before Eru, awed at the changes and vowing to show themselves worthy of the great trust.

Next Hs gaze turned to Galadriel and Arwen, who in His infinite gaze felt infinitely puny, and unworthy.

**Ye though mortal proved greater in will than the Valar, facing the Rebel in his lair and all his works. To Thou, Galadriel, pardon is given in full for Thy rebellion. Thou may return to Thine labor and thy family, Everqueen of the Eldar, their sword and their shield against the hordes of monsters that must be destroyed ere the Second children come into fullest flower. To Este and to the children of the Younger King is it given to heal the world. To your family, the task of ruling.**

**To Thou, Arwen Undomiel, will be given the choice of Luthien and a Beren who shall come two Ages from now. To Thou, true freedom of choice, against the absence of it Thou faced in the hands of Mairon the Tyrant.**

Last, His gaze turned to the Istari.

**In My task Thou fulfilled more than Thy share. To Thee was entrusted the core of the Faithful, and due to Thee the power of the Younger King and Queen of Lightning found echoes and renewal. Thou too will be given a choice. Will Thou aid the children of the King and the Queen in the renewal of Arda from the monsters the False King left behind, or wilt Thou declare Thy task as it is now fulfilled, and rest from Thy labors? Thou wert given much, and much was demanded, and to both Thou hath fulfilled.**

As one did the Istari kneel before Eru, and gave their answer, as He nodded in satisfaction.

**The First Judgment of Arda is finished. Thou overcame a force from Without Thy spheres, and those that rose have risen, and those that fell in esteem and glory have found Thy destined places.**

In a sudden whirling flash of……energy….the Allfather vanished back into the Timeless Halls and those who had been summoned to His judgment awoke in their homes as if from a dream, finding the judgment’s decrees writ indeed. Arda turned in the gaze of the Sun and the Moon, for the Age of Darkness had passed…..and the Age of Strife took its place.


End file.
